Convergence Theory
by Verlotorium
Summary: Skitter. Survivor of the Fall of Leviathan. Slayer of Shatterbird and The Siberian. Taylor and her loved ones had fought and struggled, standing victorious in the end. Then, a fourth Endbringer appeared, slaughtering her companions before her eyes before a teleporter accident hurled her months into the past. Waking up, Taylor suddenly finds herself in a very different reality...
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Worm, Worm is the property of John McCrae aka Wildbow

* * *

 **Prologue**

"Get down!" Guardian shouted.

Guardian tackled me, dragging me to the ground

A volley of dark thorns flew overhead, embedding themselves within a flamboyantly dressed cape that had stood only a few feet away

The cape fell forward mouth agape, with a look of surprise spread across his face. He had still been in shock over the equally abrupt and grisly fate that had befallen Rachel moments before, when a "Gargant" had barreled into the Endbringer Shelter, knocking her off the roof along with Judas.

Antares had rushed to help her up, only to stop and stare in shock as a massive blob of corrosive fluid had fallen on her from the flying gargoyle-like terrors above, melting her down to the bone in seconds.

It was a small blessing that I was too pumped with adrenaline to process the screams and abrupt choking noises she had made. Unfortunately, Antares hadn't so lucky, and the ten or fifteen seconds he had spent futilely trying to save Rachel had gotten him killed.

WIth a protective roar, Guardian scrambled to the fallen Defiant's spear, and spun it into a low martial arts stance. He leapt over the creature's next volley of projectiles with a butterfly kick and swept the spear out, activating the nanothorns with a hum. The creature met him head on, trapping the spear in one of the scythes that extended from what served as a mouth. He spun, striking the creature with the butt of the spear, and spun the weapon, jamming the nanothorn blade up its jaw. The creature - a "Scythecat" fell still and ceased to move.

Gasping for breath, he dropped down next to me with a thud, leaning against my back. It was comforting, having him beside me like this. We sat under the shelter of the scaffolding above, resting as another wave of Babylon's creatures appeared on the horizon.

I stared up towards the sky, where a massive, city-sized structure had blocked out the sun. A shiver ran down my sign as my eyes moved to the center of the flying structure. Spanning about four hundred meters across at the center, there was a crystalline image of a human face that periodically twisted into uncanny caricatures of human expressions, ranging from eerily neutral to gleeful sadism.

To think, it had only been two months ago when the world had experienced a miracle .

A miracle that had left a glimmer of hope that humanity could survive, that we could persevere, that we could actually beat these walking extinction events.

After two decades of hopeless death and destruction at the hands of the Endbringers, Leviathan had fallen in the battle of Brockton Bay a desperate plan concocted by Tattletale, utilizing the few powers we had available to strike down the monster in a single blow that it couldn't anticipate or prepare for.

Our celebration turned out to be short-lived, however, seeing as a fourth Endbringer had just appeared over Cambridge, Massachusetts, blocking out the sun in the shadow of its sheer size..

The Endbringer had appeared only a couple of days after the Brockton Bay Resettlement Project had finished.

The attack had started with the entity almost teleporting above the city, before opening the vents underneath to drop a massive volley of mutating spikes on the city. Those that were unfortunate enough to be struck by the spikes quickly expired, before their deceased bodies contorted into one of several types of monsters. The monsters would then spread out and kill any living thing in sight.

To top things off, there was a "Recycler" subtype that moved through the streets, absorbing fallen bodies and spawning off massive "Gargants." Ten to fifteen feet tall monsters resembling skinless, massive humans with theirs muscles and ligaments exposed. Monster that functionally rated a 4 or higher on the Brute scale.

If Behemoth was the Hero Killer and Leviathan was the City Killer, then Babylon was genocide incarnate. The minions it created were definitely killable, but the sheer quantity would make Nilbog blush..In the opening hour of the battle, more than half a million civilians had been killed.

"Just when things were looking up for us too, huh Taylor?" Guardian - no, Alan said with a wince.

He grunted, standing himself up with the hilt of the spear. His trademark black and blue armor had been torn in multiple places, and his leg was exposed from the knee down where it had grown back after being cleanly removed by a Scythecat in the last wave.

"Between the Gargants from the north and Scythecats pouring in from the east, we're not going to last another wave" I stated matter-of-factly, standing up next to him.

"Unless Scion shows up, I think we're in some deep shit guys" he affirmed. "Narwhal, Legend and Eidolon are doing some work, trying to keep the vents shut down to a minimum, but we won't last. Half the rank and file soldiers here are already out of ammo. We need to evacuate what we can, now."

"I'm gonna have to agree with the Boy Scout" Aisha muttered, suppressing her power to appear before us. She was holding a longsword covered in black ichor from the Scythecats. "It's only a matter of time before one of us gets ganked by a stray ball of death-goop like...like Bitch did."

I heard another rasp of breath, and an exhausted and bloody Cloak materialized next to Aisha hanging off of Dagger's arm.

"Fuck. Antares and Bitch too?" Dagger cursed.

"I lost the Impulse? I lost. Anyone Thinkers of command post. Anyone Thing try thinkers out hing the Impulse?" Cloak babbled, clearly shaken.

"You lost Impulse when you were trying to help get the Thinkers out of the command post?" Guardian guessed at his rambling.

As if on cue, a blue and red blur zoomed into view as Impulse zoomed past the barricades, leaving a trailing mist of blood that slowly settled down in the air. His left arm appeared to have been yanked clear out of the socket, and he held a struggling Tattletale under his arm. He flashed a grin at us.

"Sorry guys, looks like I wasn't fast enough for once. Fell beh...behin..."

He wobbled, and fell over.

Another jolt of dread ran through my body. Impulse would usually freeze into a red, unbreakable crystalline structure when he was in serious danger. It didn't happen this time.

Dagger reached down for him, but Tattletale shook her head, "He's gone." she muttered guiltily. "Lost too much blood when that thing tore his arm out. DIdn't want to activate his cop-out power, all b-because of m-me.."

It was the first time I had ever seen Lisa this genuinely mournful of another human being. Her leg had been badly injured in the battle, with multiple claw-like marks running down her mangled right thigh. She winced in pain, trying to keep pressure off the leg.

A banshee-like shriek filled the air, and a swarm of giant, bat-like gargoyle creatures descended on the battlements, spitting massive green-yellow balls of death. A tide of black creatures resembling sabertooth tigers swarmed up the hill of bodies left in the killing zone that the Army and Protectorate had created.

They rushed over dozens of machine gun emplacements, and the dying cries and death throes of men filled the air. After throwing themselves at the shelters an hour long siege, they had finally worn us down and found a break in our lines.

With an unnatural groan, a Gargant walked up to the door of one of the Endbringer shelters near us, and pulled. My heart sank as the terrified shouts of countless civilians joined the chorus of dying marines around us. I concentrating, calling up the millions of insects I had gathered up for the battle to descend in a swarm, biting at the legs of the monsters that were massacring the population of Boston. I could slow them down, but they were only insect bites in the end. Useful for once in an Endbringer battle, but still not enough to serve as anything more than a nuisance.

Dagger raised her plasma rifle and fired, searing a hole through the Gargant's chest, drawing its attention away from the garrison and the civilians holed up within.

It bellowed with rage, raising an arm before bringing it down on us as if it were swatting a fly. Halfway into its swing, the toppled building behind us rumbled, and a large ball of living plasma barreled into the Gargant.

Crown I recognized as the temperature around us rapidly rose from being exposed to his power.

He lifted the Gargant with both hands and began to channel pure plasma through its body, burning it to a crisp. Glancing around, the fires and crackling dimmed briefly as he noticed the bodies of Bitch, Impulse, and Antares.

 _"_ _GO. I'LL BUY TIME"_ the plasmakinetic berserker bellowed to us in his enraged breaker state. _"USE CHARIOT'S TECHNOLOGY. EXTRACTION."_

He gestured to the PRT administrative office behind the toppled building with one hand, before throwing out a heavy stream of purple fire at the coming horde with both hands. The Ward known as Chariot had set up a teleporter up there that would link the ruins of the Brockton Bay Protectorate, easily an hour drive away, with an administrative center in Boston.

"No, we're not leaving you here Gabriel." Guardian stood forward firmly. "I'm not leaving you here to die alone while we run away."

Crown merely responded by frying another wave of Sabrecats pushing up the mound, lighting up the bodies in the process.

 _"_ _I JOIN YOU SOON, WHEN YOU'RE IN THE CLEAR"_

"I think we're out of options, Alan" Tattletale spoke with a grimace, "The path through the fallen building there is a chokepoint, and Gabriel is the only one who can hold it for us to activate Chariot's shunt drives. You're also the only one who can cover us against the air, and no-one other than you has direct combat powers to match Crown if we're caught by an ambush."

I took a closer look at Crown. His aura of plasma was dim, and the fact that he was lucid enough to form coherent sentences meant that he was running out of strength.

"I studied Chariot's schematics pretty thoroughly when I hacked into the database last week" Dagger added. "I might be able to calibrate Chariot's teleporter to move the surrounding area into the countryside."

With another shriek, two flyers descended, lobbing their deadly payloads down at us. and Guardian threw up a shield, causing the lethal gel-like substance to splash harmlessly on it.

"Dammit...I don't like this, but I guess we don't have a choice. Gabriel, you'd better make it through this too, you hear me?"

He walked over to Antares and Impulse's bodies, and closed their eyes, and tossed them in a pile over Bitch. Solemnly, Crown threw a ball of plasma at the makeshift funeral pyre, before turning around to support the dying soldiers desperately and slowly failing to hold the line.

Something hit the ground with a soft thud behind us, and we snapped around at the sound.

Imp had fallen dead on the ground, her face frozen into an expression of pain and horror. It was likely that she had died screaming in agony. Screams that none of us could even hear due to the nature of her power. Her skull had been cracked open by the deadly, corrosive material, and the top half of her head had been gruesomely burned away.

I walked over and reached down, feeling for a pulse.

"Aisha.." I whispered. What would I tell Brian? If he was even alive? I hadn't seen him since the battle started, and Alec was in one of these shelters in civilian clothing.

I felt a warm, heavy hand on my shoulder. I didn't have to turn around to know it was Guardian.

I solemnly picked up Aisha's corpse and placed on the bonfire, fighting back my feelings of frustration, anger, and helplessness.

Overhead, a flight of Dragon's Teeth and fighter jets zoomed by, hounding a small flock of Babylon's flying minions with lasers and automatic fire.

With a grim nod of acknowledgement, Guardian picked the wounded Tattletale up, and beckoned for us to follow him into the tunnel.

Behind us, two jaguar-like creatures with scythes darted out of an alleyway, slicing apart Crown's achilles tendons. He roared in rage, falling on his black to incinerate them both point blank with plasma. His legs reformed themselves, and he stood up, challenging the large horde of creatures that rushed him even as the unpowered soldiers around us died by the dozens.

-ooo-

"We need to get you bandaged up" Guardian fussed over Tattletale.

"I-I'm fine" she replied with a reassuring grin. "You can't slow down for me."

"Lisa, I know you well enough at this point to know when you're bullshitting me, or trying to bait me. We're taking a risk slowing down, but you know as well as I do that you're going to bleed out at this rate."

Using Defiant's spear, he sheared off a piece of cloth from a table in the office room we were in, and he began to tie it tightly around Lisa's injured thigh.

I couldn't help but smile at Guardian's mothering behavior.

Although Phaseshift and the Undersiders had seriously gotten off on the wrong foot, we'd become true companions through our shared struggles.

It just wasn't fair.

We survived the ABB, cleaned out Empire 88, survived Leviathan, and drove the Slaughterhouse fucking Nine out of Boston with their tails between their legs. Coil had been killed by Mannequin in the process, leaving his massive resources in Lisa's control.

I had reconciled with my father, and all the crimes I'd committed under Coil had been forgiven by virtue of being one of the capes who had been directly involved in killing Leviathan.

More importantly, we had whisked away Dinah in the confusion, saving her from Jack Slash and whatever plans he'd laid out for her.

And now, not too long after we'd succeeded in achieving our short term goals, we were being massacred in droves. Massacred by a fourth goddamn Endbringer that had appeared almost directly on top of us and started depopulating the city of Boston an hour later.

An Endbringer that was almost tailored towards killing civilians and non-brute capes, no less. It was like facing my bug swarms on some bio-tinker performance enhancers, in the hands of an omnicidal maniac.

Shaking off my thoughts, I followed closely behind Alan and Lisa, fanning my bugs out to look for danger. Cloak and Dagger stayed close behind me, bodies tensed in case of any trouble. We ran up the stairs to the sixth floor, searching for the teleporter room.

Despite the sounds of shouting and gunfire nearby, the building was eerily dark and quiet. We passed by the offices that rung out the PRT's district administrative building quietly, and turned down several hallways that led to Chariot's workshop. We moved quickly, reluctant to push our luck.

"Stop" I called out, my bugs had found something up ahead in the hallway - a body. Clustering my swarms together, I got a better look, and the hairs on my neck began to stand on end.

Clockblocker's decapitated, lifeless body laid strewn out on the floor. The upper half of Kid Win's body was next to him, with his frozen in a look of absolute surprise. Two other members of the Wards who I didn't recognize laid nearby, and the blood that pooled on the floor continued to flow. These were fresh kills. It looked like some of the Wards had the same idea as us.

Just as I was about to alert our group, the noises began.

 _*Chit Chit, Chit Chit*_

With a crash, a pair dog-sized large crab creatures flew out from a door, and sped towards us. Reacting with mongoose-like precision, Cloak drew a pair of throwing knives and flicked his wrists, sending them into what served as a central nervous system for these creatures. They jerked, and slid on the ground, dead before they could reach us.

"The hell are these things doing up here?" Dagger wondered out loud.

As if answering her question, there was a thud from outside, and the building began to rumble.

"First rule of Endbringers" Guardian mumbled. "They're always smarter and more aware than you'd think."

He stepped up to the window in the only open office near us, and pointed down into the gray expanse. Hundreds if not thousands of assorted creatures all around us were converging to our position. My eyes widened in shock as I saw a larger, thirty foot tall gargant climbing on the side of the building, and a swarm of bat creatures closing in from the skies.

Reflexively, Alan threw up a shield as the window in front of him shattered, and a gargoyle crashed straight into an invisible force. With a cry, Alan dashed forward, jumping outside and stabbing Defiant's nanothorn spear into the creature before pulling himself back into the building using his power.

I heard a crash, and then another, and another as windows around our floor shattered one after another.

The doors began to shake and rattle in cacophony with the horrific shrieks of the gargoyles. Telltale splinters rapidly appeared along the edges, indicating that the doors wouldn't hold for long against them.

"Move!" Dagger shouted. She fired her plasma rifle in a burst at a door that had just splintered, searing a hole straight through the torso of a gargoyle.

Scooping up a groggy Tattletale with one arm, Guardian stabbed the nanothorn spear through the wooden doors as he passed with a fluid grace, thinning out the numbers where he could. Dagger's visor began to visibly run a calculation, and she reached into Kid Win's pocket, pulling out a key card. We ran together as a unit, funneling into the workshop as Dagger swiped the ID by the card reader. The entire workshop was designed to keep prying parahumans out and if we weren't safe in there, we wouldn't be safe anywhere.

One of the doors nearby splintered exploded, and a gargoyle burst out, with its deadly claws raised to strike at Dagger.

With a roar, Cloak jumped up towards the creature and thrust a knife into its neck, before ducking under a ball of goop. He stabbed upwards, piercing the monster vertically through its head, and it shrieked, falling over dead.

A wall collapsed nearby, and he spun around, stabbing his knife into another approaching creature's arm.

Dagger raised her plasma rifle again, and blew the second gargoyle's head clean off.

Another wall collapsed, and a pair of gargoyles entered the hallway with a yet another new strain of Babylon's spawn following behind it. It resembled the gargoyles superficially, with two legs, bat wings, and an impish body. It had a smooth torso, and a neck that extended out into a lamprey mouth. Its entire body was a sickening shade of yellow-gray, and it stood at a towering seven feet tall.

Cloak turned to run inside, and I jumped in surprise as a black spear shot through his hip, before fanning out in a blossoming out in a mist of blood. He stopped in surprise, and stared down at it in disbelief.

"Cloak!" Dagger shouted.

She raised her plasma rifle to her shoulder, and fired a blast at the lamprey monster's neck, splattering it into goo. Its tongue, which extended a good thirty feet out through Cloak's torso went slack, and I sealed the large, parahuman grade blast doors behind us with a click.

"Come on, stay with us Morty."

Cloak's chest was a gruesome, frayed mess. The entire right side of his torso looked like it'd been put through a meat grinder.

"Hush….cry don't...just get…out..them…."

"No no no Morty, not like this, please."

"Ren….I...lov..."

With one final agonized groan, Cloak breathed his last.

-ooo-

The room was simple as far as Tinker workshops went. The building continued to tremble as Guardian brought tools and schematics for Dagger to scan through. Dagger's expression was tense with concentration, and I could tell she was trying to not think about everything we'd experienced over the past day.

"This doesn't make any sense" Guardian muttered nearby. "There's no way for the Laplacian to be satisfied while targeting the spatial coordinates we need. Tinkertech makes absolutely zero sense."

"Chariot built this thing, and the language is some sort of unique Tinker spaghetti code. Let's see… if I perform a transformation of conventional three-space coordinates into 6 degrees of freedom, I should be able to widely expand the mass and volume limits of both the target location and the Endbringer shelters here. I'll blow the entire power grid on the eastern seaboard though."

"Fuck it, thousands of lives are at stake" Alan immediately answered. "Better to ask for forgiveness later."

"It'll take a few minutes for me to reprogram the vector calculations."

A raised mechanism which served as a warping conduit sat at the center of the room, and Dagger typed furiously at the control pad next to it as I attended to Tattletale. Lisa's breathing had gone ragged, and I was fanning at her face to keep her awake.

"Taylor ….?" Lisa whispered.

I leaned in hesitatingly.

"Sit down" Lisa croaked. "These might be my last moments ever awake, and I want to spend them with you."

"What?" I asked in shock. "Why would you say that?"

"I lost two pints of blood before Impulse even managed to reach you, and my power is the only thing keeping me awake right now." she explained, grimacing again in pain. "I need a blood transfusion soon, and I don't think I'll get it."

I clenched my fists in trepidation, before sitting down next to her. We'd already lost so much today, and I don't think we could handle losing Tattletale.

I didn't know if I could handle losing Lisa.

"You can, and you just might have to Taylor" she smiled sadly. "J-just get out of here alive, won't you?"

"Do you remember the day we'd met? Back before all this craziness, back before Leviathan. Before Slaughterhouse Nine. Robbing banks. Uploading funny pictures of Crown failing all over the internet. Simpler times"

"Crashing charity balls, too" I added, taking off my mask.

"And buying you your first real girly clothes" she smiled at me wearily with her trademark foxy grin.

"Let's go shopping again, after we make it out of here" I said, looking her in the eyes

"Yeah….that sounds nice….."

Her eyes lost focus, and she began to slump, and my chest clenched with fear. I reached out to her, but Alan beat me to the punch, ripping his helmet off and landing in front of Lisa on one knee.

"Come on! Stay with us Lisa. Look at me. LOOK AT ME!"

I had never seen her this pale before, and her breaths became shallow and long, with her eyes were glazed over and unfocused. I clasped my hands over hers while Alan frantically shook her shoulders.

"I've almost got it, keep her with awake!" Dagger shouted from the console.

While she'd been the very picture of professional stoicism moments before, tears were visibly streaking down Dagger's face. She pushed a button on the console, and the machine began to hum. The lights flickered as a visible white light began to fill a shielded power core hanging over the machine.

A loud pounding sound made us jump, and the door began to creak. I turned to the pressurized doors, body tense, and slid my mask back over my head. Alan mirrored my action, putting on his helmet.

As per PRT standard, these doors were designed to withstand blows from high level Brutes and Blasters, but we've had enough nasty surprises for one day.

Alan and I made eye contact through our helmets, and we nodded simultaneously.

The door burst open, and Guardian kicked up the nanothorn spear, standing over Lisa protectively. He drew on the high metal density in the room to keep a shield up, trying his hardest to slow the horde down. The spear thrust out like a blur, and I couldn't help but be impressed as he transformed into a dancing a whirlwind of death. He stood in front of the chokepoint, slashing away with Defiant's spear while I dropped hundreds of thousands of insects I'd lined the ceiling with down to sting and bite at the abominations.

A Gargant ducked under the arch, barreling into the workshop. Unlike the others, this one's limbs was covered in four jagged crystalline spikes each. The color and texture reminded me of Leviathan's skin.

In a typical urban environment, Guardian's shields were enough to stop rounds from high caliber rifles. In environments surrounded by ample quantities of metal, a single shield could stop a speeding train.

The Gargant swatted at Guardian's layered barrier, popping it like a balloon. The air pressure from the blow alone launched me off my feet into the back of the workshop, where I landed past the platform I felt a red hot pain run up my body from my left. Several of my ribs had also been bruised from the impact.

Looking up while addled and numb from the pain pain, I could see that Alan had engaged in melee, and he was having trouble getting past the crystalline material. He locked against an overhand swing from the creature, and I heard a snap as his arm broke at the elbow.

Alan was talented. Incredibly talented in many ways. In a sense, he was my role model before I had even realized that he was a cape. He was talented enough that Victor had at one point, tried to assimilate his civilian identity's talents, and he had escaped with wits and parkour alone.

However, skill was merely compensation for weakness, and there was only so much a person could compensate for with skill alone. We had made names for ourselves as the ones who orchestrated the defeat of Leviathan, but alone, our power sets were still mediocre when it came to direct combat.

It followed through with the momentum, throwing out a backswing. A large spike launched from the back of its unnaturally large and thick arms, and punched clean straight through the spear and last ditch shield he had raised to block. The spike cleaved Defiant's spear in two, and traveled through Alan, leaving a clean hole in his chest. It was an injury severe enough to be fatal, even for him.

He trembled, pushing himself up to stand as his mouth filled with blood. I nearly vomited as I realized his entire right lung and half his heart was missing.

The spike impacted against the unconscious Tattletale's head behind him, causing the top half of her head to burst into a shower of gore.

-ooo-

Everything stopped making sense.

I couldn't process it..

My vision blurred.

My heartbeat seemed to slow down

Why was it hot?

Was that me screaming?

I began to crawl up and over the platform.

An eight foot tall ball of purple fire jumped into the room from behind, latching its one arm around the Gargant's neck even as more scythecats flooded into the room.

Alan's body futilely attempted to heal, and he weakly swung the top half of the nanothorn spear, killing another seven monsters from his knee even as his lifeblood gushed from what remained of his heart.

Dagger screamed in grief as she fired her plasma rifle at the gargant, and the one-armed purple fireball caught it in its mouth.

 _Crown? I think that was his name._

The purple being found some stability on the back of the big monster, and began to sear at the back of the gargant's head using the added ball of green plasma he had obtained from Dagger. In a brilliant burst of light, the gargant's head burned off its shoulder. The headless gargant reached around its neck, and flung the plasma being forward, sending him hurtling into the power core before falling in a room-shaking crash.

With her attention focused on helping Crown, she failed to notice the cat creatures flanking her from the side, and a look of surprise spread across her face as she was trisected from the sternum and waist.

My vision blurred as I continued to crawl forward, even as the creatures surrounded the mortally wounded Guardian, hacking away until he went still. A pair of crab-like monsters began to approach me as I struggled and failed to get up with a broken leg and fractured ribs.

I dimly looked up as Crown screamed in agony above us, and he lashed out, desperately trying to get free. The humanoid figure inside disappeared in a brilliant flash of light as he was consumed by the machine as an energy source for the transport.

Overloaded with energy, the device began to violently tremble and quake, and electricity arced throughout the room, striking down the monster.

I could only sigh resignedly as the creatures flooding into the room rapidly converged on my location.

 _If there's an afterlife….I hope I'll see everyone soon._

With one final roar, white streaks of light began to burst forth from the platform below, and my vision turned white.

-ooo-

It felt like I was floating.

I couldn't think.

I had just seen the two people closest to me get snuffed out in an instant, and I was helpless to stop it.

I had seen my entire family perish in the span of a day.

 _"_ _Come ….. Insi..., ….lor. Pl-se. I … guarant- won't…... "_

…...

Lisa stood in front of me out of costume with a pleading expression on her face. Uninjured. Out of costume. Alive.

What?

Vaguely, I recognized that we were standing in the Undersider's loft, which had been destroyed when Leviathan self destructed after being dealt a critical blow to his core.

"Lisa?"

Her pupils dilated in surprise.

"Something's not right, Brian! Get m-"

Everything began to spin around me.

And then there was nothing.

Nothing at all.


	2. Prologue 2 - Session 0

Disclaimer: I do not own Worm, Worm is the property of wildbow

* * *

This fic will be co-written by Wanton Construction

* * *

I planted my face in my hands as the die came to a stop, the little '1' it landed on staring me straight in the face. Jon laughed. I turned to Brad. "I've apparently gouged my own eyes out or some shit; what do I see on a natural 1?"

"Crown's sight is fixed on a cardinal flying more or less directly above you all." He rolled a die behind his screen. "Dagger, roll your spot check."

Mary picked up the die and gave it a toss. "12. What do I win?"

Brad adjusted the music playing from his laptop. Rarely a good sign. "Congratulations, you manage to not miss the fucking enormous disc that looks like something straight out of _Independence Day_ emerging from the thunderclouds overhead. Anyone else wanna roll a spot check?"

Nick went next. "What does a...17...19 total get me?" he asked. Brad made a small contemplative noise.

"Impulse; you're pretty sure it's the same diameter as the city, and you've got a bad angle, but you can almost make out what looks to be a human face in the center of the disc."

"Oh good god, we're fucked," Nick groaned in response.

"Excellent," Clark began. "Antares feels the deep need to get up there as quickly as possible; it could be some prime real estate."

"Yes, a giant floating thing just appears in the sky and has a face; why wouldn't the first thought be 'I need a summer home there'?" Mary deadpanned.

"Hey, I never said it had to be a summer home," Clark defended.

Brad laughed and rolled his eyes before playing the air raid clip from his laptop."Out of the pan and into the fire!" Brad said with no small amount of glee.

"Question; do we still have the communicator thingies that Dragon dropped off like 7 sessions ago?" I asked. Brad looked at me with a grin. "In fact, they're going off right now. Directors Piggot and Renick are issuing orders for all capes in the area to begin aiding civilian evacuation."

"I guess we head to the nearest useful location?" Mary asked. "And I'll make sure Crown Jr is fully charged. Or something."

"Sure. Oh, spot checks again everybody," Brad said.

I planted my face into the table as the traitorous icosahedron displayed another natural 1. Jon had another laugh at my expense, before handing me 3 other d20s. "Ian, I think that die in particular just doesn't like you."  
"S'aright; I'm getting the shit rolls out of the way now," I responded.

Jon gave a quick fist pump as his roll came up a natural 20. "Cloak fucking sees it. I don't know what it is yet, but consider it observed!" he said pointing straight at the die.

"Indeed you do. Stuff begins falling from the giant thingamabob in the sky. As they get closer to the ground, you see that what looks like black rain is actually a bunch of giant spikes that are impacting the ground. A spike lands kind of close to you guys, about 80 yards away, straight through some poor bastard. After a couple of seconds, though, the corpse seems to rip itself away from the spike and reform into some strange panther-looking thing with scythe-like claws coming out of its shoulders."

Brad then proceeded to pull out the rolled up grid to his side, and got out his bag of minis, grabbing the tiger to represent the spawned thing. "Place yourselves, and roll initiative. Thank's to Cloak's sharp eyes you guys have one surprise round."

-ooo-

"I'm sorry, how much damage did the fucker do again?" Jon asked, mouth hanging a bit open. So was mine for that matter.

"27," Brad stated simply.

"Jesus fuck, and that was ONE attack that landed on Cloak. Holy shit I'm in trouble…..I'm at...4 HP," Jon moaned.

"Antares sincerely hopes that one of dem bois breaks into his house and slams his scythe hands straight through his skull, killing him instantly," Clark quipped. Nick sighed. "One, are you seriously going to keep calling those things 'dem bois' for the rest of the fight? Two, that's like the 7th 'killing me instantly' meme tonight."

"8th," countered Mary. "I've been counting." Everyone had a good chuckle at that.

"Well to be fair, 'dem bois'," I started with exaggerated air quotes, "are really really glass cannon-y; I mean, Dagger took out the other dude with a glancing hit that only did 9 damage. And the red shirts are putting in some work too," I finished, pointing at the minis that represented the national guard.

"Annnnnyway, it's Cloak's turn. Would you like to retaliate?"

"How is that even a question? Dude's getting a knife in the brain," Jon retorted as the die fell on the table. "19 total to hit." Brad gave the thumbs up, and Jon rolled his damage. "Woo, max damage at 13! Is he dead? Please tell me the dickface is dead."

"The dickface in question is indeed dead; Cloak's knife is buried to the hilt in the creature's skull and it collapses immediately."

"MMMF, Cloak immediately summons a couple of clone images purely for the purpose of flexing on the corpse." Mary groaned at her boyfriend.

About an hour of combat and many whiffed attacks from both sides later, the last of roughly 20 discount Tyranids was murdered, along with several dozen civilians and a handful of armed national guard in the immediate vicinity.

"Well now that there's a small lull in the action, I guess Crown will go and pick up the dog tags on the soldiers' corpses, Gears of War style?"

"Sure. You get some karma out of it even."

Fuck yes. "Stairway to heaven boys, stairway to heaven," I said, writing down the pool increase. Not that it mechanically mattered anymore due to the last arc, but fuck it, I still have my pride goddammit.

"Well, that's all the combat I had planned for today; same time next week work for everybody?" Brad asked.

"Should work for me and Jon," Mary said. Clark had yet to miss a session to my knowledge, and I was all set that day. Nick was probably not going to be able to show, but Alex was almost certainly going to be there. Brad was probably going to fill Alex in.

"Yo, we fucking need Alex next session for Guardian's passive heals. Like, fuck, that damage is nuts," Jon said. "Either that, or get Jackie back in the game."  
I said my goodbyes and hopped on the train back home.

-ooo-

Alex couldn't make it to this session either, unfortunately, citing responsible adult things. Brad decided that we need Guardian to do Guardian things, and decided to DMPC him for the rest of the session.

"Alrighty, last we left off, you had just finished killing a few of the nearby endbringer spawn, and-"

"Wait, when did we find out the floating city was an endbringer?" Clark interrupted.

"It's a floating city with a face on the underside of it raining murdercats and genestealer looking motherfuckers. What else is it going to be? You hear at some point that the Protectorate has started calling this one 'Babylon.'"

"Aww, c'mon Brad, missed opportunity there. Should've called it 'Sodom,'" Jon announced. I failed to suppress a fit of puerile giggles. Brad rolled his eyes.

"How's the evac going?" Clark asked.

"Very good question. Dragon's just started sending out updates, and the next one is playing right now: '1,843 civilians evacuated, estimated 23,000 death toll.'"

Ballsack. "And how much time has passed?"

"About 6 minutes. To be entirely fair, this thing pretty much popped into existence over Boston. No scanners (tinkertech or otherwise) picked up anything until the murderspikes started falling. The Triumvirate is still about 3 minutes out." Double ballsack.

Mary grabbed her die. "I wanna ask the visor a question," she began.

"Fair enough, what is it?"

Mary thought for a second. "How do we aid the civilian evacuation more efficiently?...with a…..26 total on the roll?"

Brad looked at her and changed the ambient music again. Hello there, feeling of apprehension! I was wondering when you'd show up again. "The visor comes back: 'check HQ premises.'"  
"Well, that doesn't sound foreboding at all!" Mary chuckled as Brad began to set up the board.

"On your way to the HQ, dodging spikes and the occasional spawn things along with way too many corpses, Dagger's visor offers up further information. The civilian escape routes being offered up by the HQ are statistically the worst possible routes to take for survival, and in addition, they're exiting from the other side of the city from where Boston's EB shelters are."

Oh, fuck you Brad don't fucking tell me you -

"When you finally reach the Boston HQ, most of the guards who aren't dead are slumped against the walls, muttering incoherently. You finally get to the command room, and-" He placed down four additional figurines next to the two that represented Piggot and Renick.

He fucking did it. Vunderbar.

"-you see 4 capes standing in the room. Piggot and Renick are sitting in their chairs, staring straight at one of the capes while continuing to issue commands."  
"Capedex time! Do I recognize any of them? Also, I make the announcement that HQ is compromised at the first available opportunity."

"All of them. One second-" Brad began to shade in a good chunk of the floor around the furthest figurine. "There we go. That right there is Silver Mercy. The two guys in front of her are Eligos and Scarecrow, and the one currently staring at the directors is Valefor. All members of the Fallen. Now, for my favorite part! Will saves!"

"Oh boy, Antares' favorite kind!" Clark said with a toss. "Something tells me a 6 total doesn't bode well for me, does it?"

"Nope! Other saves?" We went round the table. Cloak got a 15, Dagger a 14, Guardian a 19, and Crown pulled a nat 20. Woo.

"Ian roll again; you're at disadvantage because you still have PTSD from last arc." I planted my face into the table again.

"C'mon RNGesus please help…" The roll came out to a 3. "Or you can just fuck me with a rusty lead pipe. That works too I guess."

"Crown and Antares are viewing a hellscape in their own minds and are unable to act for the next round. Don't you guys just love master/stranger powers? Now Silver Mercy's turn. She looks different than the last time you saw her, having opted for what looks like a nun's getup if you added a bunch of wing patterns everywhere, and she's wrapped herself in some sort of silvery crystal protective layer. The metallic crystal seems to have a network pulsing roots coming out of it eating into the floor and outwards for about 40 feet. She turns to look at you.

" 'Oh you faithless heathens. Why? Why must you impede in our noble work and worship? You see how futile it is to fight against the Great Ones do you not? Even as you heretics managed to fell the Master of the Seas, the Forgotten City is born! Sacred deliverance is promised, and sacred deliverance they shall yield! And you will NOT stop them!' You guys notice the silver veins continue their expansion. Cloak's turn."

Jon blinked a few times. "Ok, so crazy bitch needed to die yesterday. Unfortunately, I'm not sure any of Cloak's knives are penetrating diamond anytime soon no matter how ill he is with them, so….lets bap Scarecrow I guess?...19 to hit?"

"Unfortunately that's actually a miss. Your knife seems like it's heading true, but it veers off course at the last second."

"Eligos being a fuckwit?" Jon asked. Brad nodded. "Guardian's go and he will move right about...here," he pointed on the grid, "and basically try and pull the flying kick trick on Scarecrow that I let him get away with 4 sessions ago; jumping kick pulling on the rebar in the walls to accelerate, and then immediately pushing on it so he doesn't land in the silver veins because that doesn't look like a fun time. He….hits, and….huh...damn near takes her head off.  
Scarecrow drops her concentration; Crown and Antares can act next turn with a -2 penalty. Dagger's turn."

"C'mon Crown Jr., make me proud! Pew-ing Sliver Mercy with a 17 to hit."

"Once again, Eligos says no. The projectile disperses before it hit's its mark." Mary frowned. "What an asshole."

"Alrighty, Antares go."

"O goodie. I'mma try and fuck the floor where Silver is standing. Sonic '06 was a bad game and she should feel bad…..and that's a 39 total on the power roll. How'd I do?"

"You actually managed to interrupt her concentration quite a bit, and she lost 10 feet of silver veins. Well done. Crown's up."

"Aiming at Valefor." I rolled the die. RNGesus smiled upon me with the natural 20. "I crit his fucking ass. Max damage is 26." Fuck that guy.

"Nice. Your plasma bolt goes straight through his chest and obliterates a good portion of his heart and spine. He is dead as a doornail. Piggot and Renick kind of fall over." That was worthy of a fist pump.

After a few more rounds we managed to finally kill Eligos and Scarecrow. Neither normal Crown nor Dagger could hit hard enough to get through Silver Mercy's absolutely fucking stupid levels of damage reduction.

"Ian, why don't you pop the beast mode, see if that can get through?" Jon asked.

"Saving it for the mobs back outside. Besides I don't wanna fuck up this building any more than necessary. Antares can just whittle her down until she runs away or something."

"Alrighty. While you guys were doing that, the big three showed up. Eidolon is basically doing his best impression of a net catching as many spikes as he can. Legend's made a few artillery runs, and Alexandria is off doing Alexandria things."

"So how many more people got fucking destroyed?" asked Clark.

"Death toll is sitting around 38 grand right now. Rate's dropping as Accord and Tattletale managed to set up a secondary HQ."

Mary quirked an eyebrow. "How long were we in there for? There's no way that could...wait, he's Accord, he can totally do that, nevermind carry on."

I laughed. Thinkers be broken, son.

"As you guys step outside, you hear some more announcements. The general rundown is that 'sufficiently powerful blasters' seem to be capable of damaging Babylon. Also, this is the first time in endbringer fight history that conventional arms have been effective. In addition to Legend, Purity, and other similar capes, the USAF have been peppering Babylon's topside with lots and lots of rockets. It seems to actually be mildly annoyed.

"Furthermore, you guys have a choice now; there are two evac points next to EB shelters. I-90 is easier to defend but DM-ex-machina states that more civvies will die. I-93 is the inverse naturally."

"So what I heard is Crown is raging and proceeding to take potshots at the floating shitnugget while we head to the I-93 point," I stated. "I'm down with that; more XP that way," Jon responded with a shrug.

"Hold up. Asking the visor another question: 'How do we maximize the civilian survival rate?' with a…..wooo nat 20!"

Brad grinned. Once again, not generally a good sign. "The visor heats up and starts whining as it throws itself into overdrive. After about 40 seconds, it comes back with the answer: 'Kill Eidolon.'" Jon, and I facepalm almost at exactly the same time, given that by this session both of us had read the entirety of canon. Jon finished literally days ago. I'd mown through it in about 2 and a half weeks after the 4th session of play. Unlike me, Jon took his time as he possesses this magical and elusive trait known as 'self-control'.

"Dagger's poking her visor, trying to get it to show a different answer because that sounds like an egregious fucking error right there," Mary said with a very concerned expression on her face. I struggled not to laugh. "One more time, trying a different query along the lines of: 'which point has a higher benefit-to-cost ratio?'"

"I'm just gonna give this one to you; I-93 is totes worth, especially now that Guardian is with you. Assume I'm also DMPC-ing Impulse to do useful things near the secondary HQ. Anyway, you made your choice?"  
"It looks like we're going to I-93 to fuck some bitches up," Clark noted.

"Alright. I'm assuming Crown rages and takes potshots along the way. It's going to take me a bit to set up, so now is the optimal bathroom break."

-ooo-

Remember kids, Korean barbecue is exactly as spicy on the way out as it was on the way in.

"I want my karma tap back dammit!" I moaned to Jon as I exited the bathroom. "The pool's up to 78 and I can't spend any!"

"Imagine for a minute that you get it up to 100 and Brad lets you unload all of it at once, and you get to just do stupid amounts of damage and fucking delete someone from existence; just….*boop* gone."

I laughed. "Yep. Anyway back to our regularly scheduled Sisyphean struggle."

The newly set up battle grid was now complete, and Brad had started using pocket change as he'd run out of minis. Well fuck.

"Uhhh, Brad? What're the big dudes back here?" asked Jon.

"Oh those, give me all of two seconds. These squares are 10ft instead of 5. Everyone here? Alright. See those colored blocks? Those are EB shelters, and these dudes-" he pointed at several coins on top of the shelters "-are more soldiers. More capes will be showing up soon. The big things back there; they're roughly humanoid looking, except devoid of skin with asymmetrically placed chitinous armor, and about 12 to 15 feet tall. Think Attack on Titan-ish. Anywho, this one starts moving up, and pretty much gives a lazy backhand to an SUV in its way. It gets tossed right through the second floor of the building to its side."

"Goddammit, that is one rude dude. Fuck it that's what I'm calling them now," Clark said. I looked at the board with equal parts apprehension and glee. When your character is a hammer, and there are so very many nails clamoring towards you…

-ooo-

"So after Chevalier just went full man mode on that group of dudes, it is….Dagger's turn." When Brad was rolling for Chevy that turn, he seemed incapable of rolling less than an 18 on the die.

"Uhh, so far the tactic of just shooting Crown and having him blow shit up has been working, so let's keep doing that. Pew Pew. Also, what the fuck has Skitter actually done this whole fight besides dodge? Didn't you say that her bugs can't do shit against the not-zerg?" asked Mary.

"She's the reason you know who's who and where they are with buildings in the way. Skitter is a walking maphack," Brad responded. Which was awesome because fuck fog of war. "Crown, your go."

"More murder! Aiming right between the two rude dudes who broke through the barricade…...and that's a total of 57 damage. They drop?"

"Y- one second...yep they're dead." Of course, Brad had to immediately start rolling a ton behind his screen. The little 'ooo' sound he made on the last roll told me that once again I have fucked up. He played an explosion sound.  
"In the resulting blast, one of the cars exploded instead of simply being tossed by the shockwave. THAT explosion then hit a damaged gas main for the block-" he proceeded to shade in the building behind said cars "-and pretty much this whole stretch has been reduced to rubble and flames."

My forehead and the table were good acquaintances by this point.

"Alright, who was the asshole still driving a Pinto?" Jon joked. "On the plus side, I'd assume that turning a city block into a fireball large enough to make a Sister of Battle wet means more dead spawnlings?"

"Oh yeah, a good chunk of the next wave got taken out, but so did a number of retreating soldiers."

Goddammit.

"Furthermore, in addition to this," Brad started as he proceeded to place no less than a dozen more rude dudes entering the visible battlefield, and another fresh wave of the not-zerg, "you also hear a horrible screeching noise overhead. Babylon is getting a little annoyed with Legend and Co.'s aerial runs, so it's upped the ante with a bombing run of its own. A flock of creatures that look like unholy fusions of giant worms with bat wings and bees flies overhead spewing greenish-yellow projectiles. Everybody dodge!"

I blew a hero point to ignore a crit fail, and Brad ruled that Guardian's forcefield did block the spittle. Dagger was already under some cover, so no problems there. Antares just made the check to not get gooped.  
People who did get gooped: half of the participating soldiers, a couple dozen civilians, Crusader. Apparently, the murdergoop acted like an ultra corrosive substance to anything organic, while leaving buildings and concrete and metal and whatnot totally unscathed. Good to know.

"Also, everybody who isn't in a machine gun nest is out of ammo, and down to two frag grenades apiece."

"Fucking beautiful. What's the death toll at?" I'm not sure I really wanted to know the answer.

"Looking at an estimated 300K dead so far, with a confirmed 18,350 escaping the city, and an additional 8,600 made it to the EB hidey-holes."

"Oh good. It's a stomp apparently. Are we at least making headway on Babylon itself?" asked Mary.

"The face has adopted an expression that can best be described as a derisive sneer."

"Even better. He's kicking our asses AND shitposting irl. Clearly, we need to make him into free affordable housing when all of this is over."

Thanks for the insight Clark.

Another round of projectiles, stabbing, explosions, and general mayhem later, and Bitch managed to fall off of Judas, and subsequently off of the roof Judas was standing on. The rules for fall damage are decidedly unforgiving.

"Antares is going to attempt some first aid, and to help move Bitch into a not terrible location. Dem bois are not currently nearby, so can I take 10 on it?"

"Bitch is being less than cooperative. Roll it."

Clark grumbled. "What's a 13 do for her?"

"You stabilize her mostly. Anything else?"

"YES. Antares takes out and opens his umbrella to use as cover against the goopening." Everybody laughed.

"Won't that not work? The umbrella is made out of nylon right? Granted it's not what people normally think of when the word 'organic' is used, but it still meets the chemical definition of an organic compound," Jon pointed out.

Brad put a finger to his chin. "Huh. Alrighty, I'm amending the definition; the goop kills the shit out of substances with amino acids. The umbrella will actually work." Because of course it would. Antares is by default always the most flamboyantly dressed motherfucker in any situation, and now the guy was protecting himself against super acid spit with a fucking umbrella, while people are busy getting horribly mutilated and murdered all around him. There's a sight for the mind's eye.

"Welp, that just means you get advantage on the next dodge check as the flyers come by for another swing."

Most of the PCs passed. I took 48 damage to the face because apparently being made of plasma doesn't matter to EB spawn goop.

"Let's see here, Parian...passes-"

"GOOD," yelled Clark. "Antares was going to be horribly upset otherwise."

"Why? You don't know her," Brad pointed out. "Antares is a man of high fashion," countered Clark, "he would be devastated to see her talent be taken from the world."

I chuckled. Let it never be said that Clark can't get into a role.

"Anyway, Victor...passes, Krieg….passes, Dragon...doesn't, but that's not terribly concerning just yet, Regent is fine, Clock is fine, Othala….is fucking dead, Kid Win gets slurrified, Skitter...oof just barely makes it, and Bitch….ouch.

"Bitch crit fails. She tries to stand up too quickly, but her leg gives out, and she falls away from you Antares, and out of the cover of the umbrella. A goop ball hits your umbrella, and splashes off, right onto her head. She can scream for all of half a second."

Ouch indeed.

A few more rounds passed before the big beefy sons of bitches had made within striking distance of the EB shelters, and started pounding on the walls. The soldiers had used all their ammunition, and it was now looking even more fucked. Brad looked at the clock quickly.

"You guys notice the creatures stop mid-whatever they were doing. They return to a neutral stance and then begin to melt/vaporize into a mix between ashes and black mist. Babylon's face changes to a neutral expression, and then a smile as it begins to leave."

"What the fuck? It's just like 'Well that was fun, later guys!' and up and leaves?" asked Mary. Brad nodded in response as he began to put everything away.

"Fucking endbringers man," Mary said. I had to agree.

"I'm pretty sure we can chalk this one up as a big fat L," Jon stated. "Like, it's really letting us know exactly how hard it could've fucked us. What's the final numbers?" he asked, putting his sheet away. It was getting late and we all had to get home.

"Final numbers were going to be around 480 grand confirmed dead, with about 30K confirmed safe, and another 120K unaccounted for. I'll throw up a doc with the cape deaths at some point. Same time next week work for everybody?"

-ooo-

Getting home was a pain in the dick. On weekends I make a point of trying to catch the 12:27 am train. Experience has told me that the next three are almost always shitshows. Unfortunately, that train was cancelled tonight, as well as the one after it. Switch problems or some shit.

The train that I need finally leaves around 1:45, and it's packed full of people leaving from all sorts of venues. Hockey games, concerts, what have you. Doesn't help that most of these people are drunk, and we have 3 trains worth of passengers trying to be crammed into one.

Problem with drunk people is that there's different flavors, and this train happened to be filled with the white girl wasted and belligerent varieties. By the time I got home, it was 3:10 in the morning, I had someone else's partially digested fries on my shoes, pants soaked with beer, a bloody nose, and bruised knuckles. And on top of that, it had started raining.

While not the worst commuting experience I've ever had, definitely makes the top 10.

I tossed my shit on the couch, went to the kitchen and opened the fridge, and saw the bottle of rum was still about a third full. I was already in a shitty mood, and I have trouble going to sleep when angry, so polishing off the bottle seemed like a halfway decent idea at the time.

I didn't even bother taking off the rest of my clothes before flopping on the bed.

-ooo-

A flash outside interrupted my attempt to fall asleep.

My eyes shot open to lights overhead that was way too bright. And the floor was not very comfortable at all.

Wait. I shut the lights off. And I wasn't sleeping on the floor last I checked. The fuck?

I blinked a bunch until my eyes adjusted to the bright lights of…..I was in a public bathroom of some type.

In different clothes than what I fell asleep in, and….

Fucking diseased cunt waffle on a stick I have nothing in my pockets. No phone, no wallet, no money, no ID, nothing. I barely managed to peel myself off of the floor and reach the nearest toilet before emptying my stomach into it.  
After a minute or two, I managed to stumble towards a sink and washed my face a bit.

"...gggrrrnngh….."

I froze.

"...what...who...Ian?"

I turned around. Sitting on the ground where I hadn't noticed him before is Nick. Except with one massive difference.

"Uhhh, Nick, you might want to look in the mirror."

He pulled himself to his feet, walked over. His mouth hung open for about 5 seconds. "I'm WHITE. HOW DID I GO TO BED ASIAN AND WAKE UP WHITE? Ian, what the fuck is going on holy shit why did I wake up in a public bathroom-"

He stopped mid panic looking at something behind me. Clark had just started getting up, staring at the both of us.

"Ian? Nick? What's going on? Was I drugged while not looking?" he asked getting to his feet. He blinked a couple of times. "Ian, why is Nick white?"

"Clark, I think you want to take a look in the mirror yourself," Nick said.

"Holy shit I just dropped like 90 pounds and became ginger. I was apparently magically roofied instead of the normal kind."

"And I'm guessing neither of you has anything in your pockets either?" A quick search and a shake of the head confirmed my suspicions. I let out a sigh. "Let's see if we can even figure out where the fuck we are first." I headed for the exit and hesitated a bit as I saw the Red Sox logo on the door. No fucking-

Clark pushed me out of the way to open the door.

Yep. Fenway Park.

It's the middle of the night. Neither my friends nor I have any money, ID, or phones, and now we're actively trespassing in a city that none of us have been to with no recollection whatsoever of how we got there. I don't even bother trying to go back in the bathroom before throwing up again.

* * *

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	3. Chapter 1

**Agony.**

 _I blinked the pain away, wondering why my leg was throbbing. I'd gotten scuffed up in the Endbringer's initial assault, and I probably had some fractures I wasn't aware of._

" _Fuck, we're still getting torn apart out there, even with its hydrokinesis nullified." Strider rasped as he reappeared with a barely-conscious Myrrdin over his shoulders._

 _Guardian stood grim, perched on the edge of the wobbling skyscraper as Leviathan weaved between a coordinated assault between the Triumvirate and two dozen capes in the distance._

 _His entire focus was spent on maintaining the most complicated and intricate forcefield lattice I'd ever seen, with hundreds of meters of metal wire suspended in the sky around us and held up with his power folding on itself. With this much metal around us, we had been able to hold out against Leviathan's assaults several times, albeit with some trouble._

 _Leviathan had managed to smash its way through the force barrier three times. However, whenever the forcefield matrix had begun to crack, Strider would teleport us to a building some distance away. Far away enough that Leviathan couldn't reach us without running into a wall of Alexandria type capes. In a matter of seconds, Archive would pull an identical lattice mesh she had stored, which had been produced by Kaiser's power en masse._

 _It was funny that if Guardian and Kaiser weren't complete and bitter arch-enemies, they would have had made an unbelievably powerful tag team._

 _ **Frenetic deceased, BW-6. Rime down, BW-4. Anomaly deceased, BW-7. Alabaster deceased, BW-7**_

" _I need to be down there" Strider growled through clenched teeth, staring down at the battle from the roof._

" _I'd resist the urge if I were you, Strider" Guardian responded sternly. "We need you bringing downed capes to safety here, and you're far too valuable to risk in another close call. The damned thing would have executed you if I hadn't risked my neck to shield you, long enough for you to teleport us out."_

" _Take the safe rescues that Dragon's programs reroute to you, but until then, sit your ass here with us." Artificer admonished. "Antares is the most important cape on the battlefield right now, arguably as important as the Big Five."_

" _Besides" I added, "We came up with a plan."_

 _Antares stood on a makeshift tower, created from stacking Guardian's shields on top of each other to get a perfect view of the battlefield. The entropy manipulator had been a joke. He was a C-lister and an entertainer, and he had taken it in stride. He had built an entire online persona around his vapid and outrageous flamboyance, but none of the eccentric entertainer remained here. His usual flippant demeanor had twisted into one of stern concentration and determination the moment Leviathan had shattered his smartphone._

 _Antares was a YouTuber spoken in the same lines as Uber and Leet, whose ability to accelerate entropy and other thermodynamic properties had in the course of the last hour, become the most **spectacular** counter to Leviathan's hydrokinesis the world had ever seen._

 _I hadn't been there when it happened, but from what I could piece together, Tattletale had requested an escort to get a better view of the battlefield. Realizing that Crown was the only cape who could fight Leviathan up front, Phaseshift had gone up to protect her in case anything went wrong._

 _Minutes later, a massive multi-story tall tidal wave that had surged in their direction, which promptly….dispersed into harmless water vapor. To top things off, the wave's forward momentum had completely dissipated, and a fine, misty fog filled the air wherever Leviathan attempted to summon his tidal waves._

 _Antares had also been streaming the battle live until the phone lines went down. PHO was going to have a field day with that stunt tomorrow, and the clip had probably gone viral already. Leviathan's response had been swift and brutal, and the Endbringer had immediately turned its full attention on him. However, Strider had reacted quickly,and managed to teleport to safety with Antares._

 _Needless to say, protecting Antares had quickly become a priority for anyone who'd witnessed the feat, and capes all around had rushed to defend him. Now we had a small platoon of capes working to keep Antares protected._

 _Once Eidolon had gotten word of what Antares was capable of, he had quickly rushed to join the fray. Eidolon had immediately dropped Leviathan thirty feet into the ground with a Gravity Pulse. In that moment, Antares turned his power across the stormclouds above. With a sweep across the sky, the category 5 hurricane had weakened into a gentle drizzle,until Leviathan got out of the ground and attempted to start the storm anew._

 _Antares promptly shut him down, and the Endbringer redoubled its efforts to eliminate him. Strider had reappeared with Clockblocker a second later, putting a freeze on the forcefield lattice Kaiser and Guardian had set up._

 _With Antares focusing on Leviathan, any attempts Leviathan made at summoning his water shadow immediately failed, and there was nothing the Endbringer could do to reach him. Nor could Leviathan touch unconscious capes the teleporters pulled into the frozen mesh from the battlefield._

 _Now, the Protectorate's strongest capes were actually managing to keep it pressured with the water evaporated into a heavy fog of water vapor. It helped a lot that Eidolon was completely focused on battling Leviathan directly instead of managing battlefield control for once._

 _"You absolutely sure about this Tattletale?" Clockblocker remarked unsurely. "Antares is doing some serious work shutting down the damn monster's mobility and water, but actually killing an Endbringer?"_

" _I have to agree. I ran your estimates through a simulator, and if its core is as dense as you guessed, then there isn't enough mass in the known universe to actually break the damn thing." Dagger pointed out._

" _I'm positive", Lisa answered them, "Flechette's power doesn't care about conventional physics. It lets her cut clean through anything, and I mean_ _ **anything.**_ "

 _Lisa turned to me, "How's the web coming along, Skitter?"_

 _ **Pain.**_

" _Almost ready" I answered, blinking away another momentary spike of pain. I looked up at Parian, Artificer, and Flechette. Artificer was busy spraying some sort of chemical adhesive in the air while parian wove the strings to attach them together and lengthen their range._

" _You'd better not be jerking our chain about all this, blondie" Flechette snarled at Tattletale._

" _Come on Flechette, you saw how your bolts passed cleanly through the thing. I_ _ **know**_ _you can kill it, unless Leviathan wanted to let me see all that as a ruse."_

" _Just stick to the plan everyone" Guardian grumbled. "Strider, Cache, Archive, get ready. I'm about to contact Eidolon. We should be able to hold him for about three seconds right? Dagger?"_

" _According to the Energy-Pressure models I threw together based on all past Leviathan battles? Yeah." Dagger's visor continued to flash as she typed away at a miniature keyboard. "Leviathan might be holding back, but if past Endbringer battles are any indicator, it won't show any new cards until we actually manage to threaten it. The forcefield you'll be able to throw up can withstand something on the order of tens of Gigapascals, which will hold him tight for about... two point eight four seconds. That is of course, unless the creature increases its physical strength threshold again."_

 _ **Pain.**_

 _I winced, bracing myself before speaking up. "Everybody here knows the plan. We go in fast and hard. Between all the capes here with transportation abilities and pocket dimensions we can drop several tons of metal on Leviathan. As you know, Guardian's shielding power increases exponentially with the amount of metal present."_

 _Kaiser clucked his tongue in irritation._

" _If Tattletale and Dagger are to be believed" Guardian added, moving to my pile of silk. "Any actual damage done to Leviathan is superficial. It's all just another misdirection from the bastard. If we're going to attack it at all, we need to disable it for the killing stroke immediately after. With any luck, severing the tail and legs should buy us enough time to dig up the actual core. We'll be trying to do everything in our power to hold him down while Parian, Vista, and Flechette set up their combination attack."_

 _I swallowed a lump forming in my throat, before speaking up again, trembling. "Endbringers have historically only escalated when we begin to give them a modicum of trouble. That means we need to cripple if not kill the thing before it can pull out any new tricks. We'll only have one shot at this."_

" _Right, kill a creature that's notorious for letting you think you've got it before massacring everyone in sight" Impulse deadpanned. "I hope you all know this is suicide."_

" _I know, Impulse. Someone has to step up though" Guardian responded, squeezing my shoulder reassuringly. "It's been too long since the world has seen a single ray of hope when it comes to Endbringers. It's about time we gave them one."_

 _ **Agony**_

 _The world rushed by in a blur._

 _A black butterfly fluttered through an endless blue expanse._

-ooo-

I woke up, and I screamed.

I didn't know why, I just screamed and screamed..

I thrashed and rolled to the right, feeling a searing pain as needles and pins raked my arms and legs, causing the monitors around me to beep furiously. An eternity later, I could dimly make out a group of people in scrubs rushing in and holding me down. I lashed out in panic, kicking and punching and biting. A sharp jolt of pure agony ran up my leg, and I spasmed upwards.

I was feverish, and everything just hurt so much, to the point that I wasn't thinking at all. I felt _terrified_ , and I didn't know why. Why did everything hurt so much? Where was I? How did I get here? What happened? I vaguely felt a pair of hands cupping my face, and everything blurred out.

-ooo-

 _ **Agony.**_

 _ **-letale Down, CA-9**_

 _ **Antares Down, CA-9**_

 _ **Menja Deceased, CA-9**_

 _ **Othala Down, CA-9….**_

 _I coughed and sputtered, lifting my mask to give myself some room to breathe. My soaked mask clung to my lower face, forcing me to hang my head to keep my breaths from pulling more water into my mouth. A few coughs and heavy exhalations cleared the worst of it away._

 _The surprise attack had gone well. The pocket dimension capes had gone first from the air, dropping literal tons of metal down at Leviathan while Eidolon held him down for a moment with a gravity manipulation power. Guardian had then trapped him in place by carving his forcefields into the mass of steel. Then, Parian used her to power to surround the makeshift prison with the silk that had been infused with Flechette's power._

 _With a creak and groan, the Endbringer had burst out of the hunk of scrap and forcefields used to contain it, and Parian tightened the lines. The massive web of silk carved straight through the metal, and dozens of silk lines criss-crossed through Leviathan's body causing the creature to fall apart in chunks much to the disbelief of every cape that was present._

… _ **.Laserdream down, CA-9**_

 _ **Artificer down, CA-9  
Kaiser deceased, CA-10**_

 _Then, my world had exploded in white hot pain, and now I found myself slowly crawling to my feet in a daze, wondering what exactly had happened._

 _About four blocks away, flying capes swarmed around the Endbringer, dodging telegraphed lightning bolts from the sky and pummeling the injured monster with a barrage of high-powered attacks. Crown, Phaseshift's heavy hitting plasmakinetic_ _ **ate**_ _a lightning bolt and spat it directly at the torn-up Endbringer. Leviathan barely flinched from the attack - a lightning bolt that would have easily dropped a high level brute as it continued to stand and fire narrow jets of pressurized water._

 _Despite the pounding headache I had, it was clear what had happened after a moment of collecting myself. Leviathan had sent a lightning bolt to come directly down on our heads. The incomplete forcefield lattice was the only thing that had prevented us from being barbecued on the spot. Our combination attack had been successful, severing both of Leviathan's legs and shredding its torso into hamburger meat. However, with Antares taken down, the skies had begun to darken again, and Dragon's communicators were already reporting increasing tidal activity in the area. I took a moment to compose myself, and my body spasmed as I felt another wave of pain shoot up my spine._

 _ **Agony**_

" _L-Little owl…" a voice choked out nearby._

 _My eyes widened in surprise at the nickname. There were only a handful of people in the world who knew about that nickname, and the only one who consistently called me by it was dead._

I slowly turned towards the voice, and my lightning-addled brain throbbed in pain. Guardian was lying in a bloody and charred heap on the ground.

 _It was clear that he had taken the brunt of the lightning bolt while trying to build his forcefield lattice. His chest plate had been charred by the lightning bolt, and it had been partially glued to his chest. His trademark visored face mask had been blown apart by the force of the lightning bolt. Guardian winced as he pulled his leg off a metal spike he had landed on, and he rolled over, dragging himself into a seated, slumped against the wall. I stared down at him with a deer-in-headlights look as he met my eyes with a sheepish grin._

 _The Guardian of Brockton Bay's identity had been revealed to me, and it took me a moment to realize that Guardian was someone I knew_ _ **very**_ _well._

 _Before he had vanished from my life, at least. Before I had lost Emma for reasons still unknown to me in the same year._

 _I leaned over with my knife, cutting away what I could before the rest of his armor could cool and weld to his chest. He shifted away reflexively, and choked in pain._

" _Don't try to move, Alan" I whispered. "You're in pretty bad shape."_

 _"Heh, I'll...I'll be fine unless that fucker takes a moment to come over and finish us off. I got up from injuries way worse than this when I brought down The Merchants."_

 _He coughed, spitting out blood before forcefully ripping out the pieces of his armor still stuck in his skin through clenched teeth._

 _"How long have you known?" I asked quietly, frantically cutting away at his armor. It was fortunate all things considered that the armor had only melted in above his sternum._

 _"Since the first night I ran into you kicking Lung's ass. By the way, you have very nice hair and all, but you should make more of an effort at concealing your identity. You should definitely wear a different hairstyle and distort your voice a little if you're going to do this stuff."_

" _This isn't exactly the best time to lecture me on being a cape, Alan. I guess now I know why you let us go when you found us after the bank incident."_

" _You're right on the mark kid, but I digress. Where's Kaiser? I...I can still fight, and we need to set up the dome again" he sputtered with clear false bravado. "Get Antares here some smelling salts and everything."_

 _I glanced around, head throbbing in pain, before my eyes settled half a block down. The E88 leader had been flung clean off the roof by the force of the lightning, and had landed on a poor angle. We had been lucky, dropping down into the building from the fourth story instead of being tossed off outright. I numbly recalled that the armband had pronounced him dead about a minute ago._

" _Kaiser's dead" I responded. "Looks like you two won't get to terrorize Downtown with your little lover's spats anymore."_

" _Well, isn't that a damn shame" he chuckled through ragged breaths. "We made such a great team too. It's rather unfortunate that we spent so long trying to take each other out."_

" _What now?" I asked uncertainly._

" _Take charge, kid."_

" _Huh? What could I possibly do in this situation?"_

" _You have a gift...I've known it ever since the first time I saw you in action. You and me...we can slug out on the front lines if we really have to, but that isn't where we belong. We fight with our brains. You took down Lung, something no-one has been able to do before. Remember the plan...this is just another Lung, Taylor."_

 _He painfully brought his armband up to his mouth, and activated the armband._

" _Guardian speaking." he coughed, as he out a mouthful of blood. As you might know by now, Antares is down, and I am too injured to continue leading our desperate little assault. I am turning my haphazard Endslayer operational control over to Skitter. Her power allows her unparalleled field surveillance. We have over a dozen injured capes under the caved-in roof across the street from Fugly Bob's. We're going to need a teleporter evac at first available opportunity."_

 _His wounds were already knitting together before my eyes, but it'd be a while before he could get up from that._

" _Kill the fucking bastard, Taylor. Make it pay for everything it's done"_

 _With one more ragged cough, he dropped his head back onto the ground, and sank away into blissful unconsciousness._

 _ **Guardian Down, CA-9.**_

 _I turned to glance at the battle again. Leviathan was standing on one leg, using jets of pressurized water to stay upright as its flesh knit together, noticeably slower than ever before, The capes still lucky and strong enough to stay on the field were going all out against it, hammering its exposed core with everything they had._

 _I looked back down on my old friend's broken form, and I clenched my fists in anger._

 _The Guardian of Brockton Bay and Tattletale had both gone down, but it had taken the three of us to throw together the haphazard plan. The plan we had conjured had worked. We had already made Leviathan bleed more than anyone had in the entire history of Endbringer battles. The damage was really all for show if Lisa was to be believed, but we'd still grounded its and exposed its core._

 _It was time to finish the job._

 _ **Agony.**_

 _I jerked in alarm as my vision blurred, then everything shattered into a chaotic whirlpool of fuzz, static, and pitch-black butterfly wings._

-ooo-

"We're losing her!"

"Get me half a cc of epinephrine, stat!"

The EKG besides the patient's bed beeped rapidly, then drew out into a long, flat green line, and the hospital floor descended into abject chaos.

"What in the world is going on in here?" Panacea demanded as she stomped into the room. She turning her gaze on the patient and blinked in surprise.

"I just healed her injuries yesterday, I was pretty damn thorough with the job too."

"I don't know what's going on, Ms. Dallon. She just woke up screaming and kicking, and the next thing we knew, her bones just started...cracking."

"Out of the way" Panacea commanded. She walked up to the patient and cupped her hands around the girl's neck.

 _Seven ribs that were bent and fractured with obvious impact trauma. Microtears all over her aorta and left ventricle. Ruptured appendix, lungs, and right kidney. Spine shattered below the sixth thoracic vertebrae. Shattered left femur with a sprained ankle. Trauma-induced peripheral neuropathy. I'm positive these are the same injuries I healed yesterday, but at a significantly reduced level of severity. What the fuck?_

Panacea focused, repairing the physical damage wherever she found it. Then, she restarted the girl's heart before oxygen death could set in.

A second later, the EKG began to beep rhymically again, and the flat chime of death was replaced by the wonderful pulse of life.

-ooo-

 _...Leviathan's macrohydrokinesis had resurged to unprecedented levels, and the rain began to pour in the relentless torrent it had been early in the battle. Tidal waves slammed into the docks, toppling buildings and flooding the streets beneath us._

 _I sat on the third floor of the building next to Fugly Bob's, eyes closed as I gathered insects to speak into the assorted armbands I'd collected on the floor in front of me._

 ** _..Glory girl deceased CA-5_**

 ** _Hookwolf deceased CA-6_**

 ** _Lady Photon deceased CA-4_**

 ** _Shielder deceased, CA-5_**

 ** _Strapping Lad deceased CA-6_**

 ** _Manpower deceased CA-6_**

 ** _Shieldwall deceased CA-7_**

 ** _Brandish deceased CA-6_**

 ** _Seventeen more deceased. Calculating losses…._**

 _Capes fell in droves defending Flechette, victims of its newly revealed hydrokinetic kill radius. The Endbringer tossed a constant barrage of pressurized water jets and lightning bolts at her direction, and teleporters. The downpour, constant pressure, and heavy winds were interfering with her ability to take aim and finish off the Endbringer._

 _ **Agony**_

 _A swarm of blue butterflies filled my mind's eye vision, and everything faded to black._

 _-ooo-_

I drifted, with an endless reel of images rushing by. The chaos swirled into a blend of abstract edges, and shattered into a disturbing cacophony of fractals and alien geometries. It was like I was staring through a kaleidoscope, which assaulted me with an endless barrage of noise, tastes, and smells. I couldn't think or move.

The picture shattered, and fell like glass in my line of vision, leaving me in total darkness.

I dreamed.

I dreamt of my parents.

I dreamt of Lisa taking me shopping for the first time.

I dreamt of the endless gauntlet of good-natured pranks Aisha and Mortimer would conspire to spring on Gabriel.

I dreamt of Alec and John, competing, and shouting obscenities while playing their video games..

I dreamt of Petyr, climbing to his feet and staring down Bonesaw with a broken ankle buying me enough time to escape.

I dreamt of a happier time, in a nostalgic past, where families would get together for holiday dinners. Whole and unbroken. No serendipitous accidents to rip us apart.

I dreamt of a single ethereally beautiful blue butterfly, fluttering its wings in the endless void.

-ooo-

My eyes fluttered open, and I found myself staring up at a white ceiling. I could dimly hear the unfortunate and telltale hum of a cardiogram nearby, and I looked down only to see a bunch of wires sticking into me.

...Was that a catheter?

I looked around, sitting up to stare at the white walls, surrounded by the smell of rubbing alcohol and various chemicals.

Well Taylor, looks like you managed to land yourself in a hospital. Again.

I stared straight ahead, directly at the unblemished white wall in front of me. I was tired and spacing out, and having trouble remembering what had happened to me **this** time.

Ah right, and then an Endbringer had suddenly appeared over Boston, but why couldn't I remember anything about the battle? Was I Mastered?

I was in the middle of trying to collect my thoughts when the door to the room clicked, and I tensed as the door slammed open. A team of a doctor wearing a white lab coat and a pair wearing blue scrubs and surgical masks rushed into the room shouting and yelling at each other while fumbling with a cart full of medical supplies. All three of them had serious expressions across their faces, and started towards me with looks that could kill.

They stared at me in surprise, and the tension faded from their bodies, replaced by relief.

"Holy shit Dave... She's awake." the doctor to my left blurted out.

I pulled off my respirator, "W-what's going on?" I asked weakly.

The man in the white lab coat stepped forward, crouching down next to me. His nametag said "David Moskowitz" and he fit the very picture of a stereotypical doctor.

"Miss Hebert," the Dr. Moskowitz started. "You are currently at Brockton Bay General Hospital. The current date is the fourteenth of April, and it is two thirty seven in the afternoon. Do you know why you're here?"

 _Claws. Teeth, yellow, smoke-laden skies. Burning buildings. The screams and death rattles of civilians being slaughtered en masse._

I still couldn't remember any details.

I shook my head.

Huh? Fourteenth of April? Was I out for half a year? Wait. Brockton Bay?

"Poor girl" the doctor muttered. "What is the last thing you remember?"

"Walking down the street" I answered honestly. The last thing I honestly remembered was rushing to my closet to get suited for the Endbringer battle.

"...Then I woke up here" I continued numbly.

"Would you like to know what happened?" the doctor asked gently.

I nodded numbly, and he stared down at his clipboard.

"Approximately seventy-two hours ago, a frantic, anonymous call was dialed to emergency services. First responders found you two blocks along the ambulance route, lying on the side of the street. You were found screaming and wailing, covered in bruises, bruises, and a wide array of other injuries. You were healed by Panacea in the ICU and… like clockwork, the injuries reappeared again on the 12th and 13th, exactly at this time. The injuries required her intervention both times, so you really have Miss Dallon to thank for saving your life."

As if on cue, a cowled figure hurried into the room, brushing past the doctors. It was another sight to add an already bizarre experience - Panacea in her old costume. The costume she'd abandoned before joining me on the manhunt to chase down the surviving members of Slaughterhouse Nine.

"Amy?" I blurted out.

Panacea responded by blinking in surprise with no sign of recognition on her face whatsoever.

"I'm sorry" she said slowly, "Have we met before?"


	4. Session 1

Session One: Clark Horowitz

 **Written by WantonConstruct**

Seeing Ian puking as much as he was just then was a little disturbing. Kinda made me wanna puke as well, and I wasn't 100% convinced I wasn't about to start suffering similar symptoms. "You ok there buddy?"

"Nah, not really but I'll be good in like half a minute. I'm still a little drunk, so my stomach isn't handling the news too well." Well that wasn't all that surprising then. The being drunk part that is.

Also, it was really _really_ cold out here. Like, unreasonably cold for May. My breath was fogging. Thank god we seem to at least be dressed for the occasion in suitably warm clothes. So now we might as well take a second to look around...a baseball field with a tarp over it. Alright I've definitely been drugged or something because I hate sportsball in most of its flavors, and thus cannot imagine a scenario in which I'd willingly go to a game.

"Alright seriously guys let's get out of the wind at least," Nick suggested, teeth chattering. "Holy shit it's cold out." I had to agree with him.

Ian wiped his mouth. "You've got a point. Let's try to head to like a main entrance or something. We can always come back here if we *hic*-eed to."

Sounds like a plan, Stan. We started walking towards the stairwell-

 _-whump-_

And I promptly fell on my ass. Ow. Stupid black ice.

Wait a second. Why the hell is there ice on the ground? "Guys? Did we somehow end up in Canada? It's too damn cold here. There's ice on the ground."

Nick just looked at me. "Clark, take a look at the giant ass logo on the wall. See the all-caps Boston in the logo? And now's not the time for another Canada's-not-real-life joke." Well then. I can always count on Nick to point out something obvious and make me feel stupid.

"Fine. Which way do we want to go?" I asked. "Well, we're basically on the ground level, and-" Ian pointed to the unlit exit sign "-that seems like the best shot."

If only the lights were on down that way. It's way too dark outside to be fumbling around in a completely unfami- wait. The lights are off pretty much throughout all of the stadium. "Guys, before we go anywhere, help me verify something? Do you see any other lights on on any of the other levels?"

"Huh," Nick said, as his face changed from irritation to mild interest. "You...you are not wrong. Still, do you really want to stick around here long enough to figure it out? I'm already freezing my balls off for fucks sake."

After a few minutes and a few more falls because black ice is even harder to see in the dark, we had gotten down to one of the main gates of the park. One the one hand, this was a good thing because it meant we were almost outside. On the other hand, getting outside meant figuring out how to open up the big fuckoff green sliding door. In the dark. With only the moon and ambient light pollution to help us see. I don't like our chances. So might as well offer something.

"Alternative idea. Might be worse, bear with me here, but hey, it could work. The wall isn't that high is it? And some of these trash cans and dumpsters we could probably move with a bit of effort."

Ian and Nick looked at each other, and then me. Ian spoke first. "Fuck it. I don't have a better one, and this gate seems to be electronically controlled from somewhere else. You good Nick?"

"We're already up shits creek without a paddle, might as well use our hands."

It took us probably about twice as long as it should have to be able to drag some of the trash cans over to the nearest dumpster. Thank god the cover wasn't too slanted, otherwise we'd never be able to stack the cans on it. I offered to go first to try and get over the wall. Or at least on top of it.

Thank god I'd somehow lost a ton of weight, otherwise I have no idea how I'd be able to haul myself over the lip. As it currently stands with my regular arms and reduced mass, I had a bit of trouble. Fifth time turned out to be the charm, and I managed to maneuver myself so I sat straddling the top of the wall. Ian hauled himself up quicker than I did, and we both managed to help Nick up without falling over, which was a small miracle by itself.

Getting down was the part that we'd have to figure out on the fly now. The drop certainly looks a lot longer from the top of the wall than from the floor.

Ian looked down. "Uh, well, shitty idea, but what if I *hic* tried to get down first, and then tried to catch each of you in turn? I mean, I got *hic* the wingspan so I've physically got a shorter drop?"

Well, actually that's not a-

*woooOOOp*

I nearly fell off the goddamn wall right then, and I only just caught myself. "HEY, DON'T DO THAT; YOU NEARLY MADE ME FUCKING DIE," I screamed without even paying attention to what the noise was or who it came from.

I looked up and - ah, crap.

The cop and his partner chuckled a bit. "Relax there skippy. Tell you what. We'll help you down from there, and take you to the station to warm up a bit. Won't even book the trespassing if you got a wicked enough story. Sound good?"

The cop and I just looked at each other. Well, tonight's shaping up to be a long one.

On the bright side, the station was exactly as warm as they said it would be, which was quite the welcome change. On the downside, I was immediately informed that some fuckery was afoot after Officer Quigley's first question.

"So you guys managed to break into Fenway Park in the middle of the night, in December, for...what reason again?"

I looked at them like their shirts were on inside-out and backwards. December? Half a year had gone by in the blink of an eye? Or whatever period of time passes between laying down and actually falling asleep? Well fuck. So much content that I need to catch up on once I manage the freewheel it outta here.

….it says probably says something uncharitable about me that new content was the first thing that popped into my head over trying to find my family and friends again to tell them that I'm not in fact dead.

Probably should take care of that first.

"...hey, you there buddy?"

Whuh. "I'm sorry, you were saying?"

The officer looked at me a little funny. "Yeah, I was saying that the guys said you had nothing on you, so I need your name, social, and age for the system. You feelin' alright there kehd?"

"Yeah, sorry, just you said it was December." I wrote down the info on the pad he gave me.

"Yeah, what about it mister...Horowitz?"

"Just that when I went to bed last night it was May 14th, so I've no idea what happened in the past six months. Like, not a damn clue. So I can't tell you how I ended up in the baseball park but that's the very next thing I remember. Like y'know that feeling when you lie down to go to sleep, just blink _once_ , and BAM it's 6am and you're like 'what the fucking shit'? Basically that except, y'know…..longer."

The guy just gave me the harshest side-eye ever.

Yeah I was rambling pretty fucking bad. Probably somebody would accuse me of being a complete moron, that you're never supposed to tell the cops jack shit, but what the shit was I gonna do at that point? This isn't some movie that was made of ass where every cop ever is literally fucking Satan. I least I hoped not. Because that would suck.

Seriously I wasn't gonna be able to fake anything believable on the fly. If I tried I'd have probably tried to make up something involving space whales in an attempt to be funny. Would've gone way worse.

"Alright, I'mma go run this by a few guys in the back, see if there's been any missing persons reports anywhere. Joey just watch him for a bit will ya?"

His partner moved to sit across from me with a look equal parts 'Jovial Anthony Fantano' and 'Son, I am disappoint'. This was definitely shaping up to be a very long night.

I wondered if Nick and Ian were doing any better.

"So, anything you need in particular from the vending machine?" he asked after a bit.

Welp he just became my new favorite man in the entire goddamn building. "A ginger ale would make you my temporary best friend." That got a laugh out of him.

He was fairly quick about it too. "So, you got any plans for New Year's? Anything you normally do 'round this time?"

"Normally, I'd go to one of my cousin's houses or something. But I did miss Chanukah, which kinda sucks a bit. And Yom Kippur." Ah well. I got stoned for the first time on 4/20 and I didn't fucking die or anything. First time for everything.

The first guy came back scratching his head a bit. "Hey kehd, you _sure_ this is your social? Might wanna double check."

"Yeah, why?" I had to write it down on like 18 dozen different loan and housing forms over the past year; I knew that fucking number.

"Well, uh, that's a wicked problem then, cause according to the box it ain't yours. We could try your date of birth if you want?"

"Alright. January 16, '95." Not sure how that was going to help but I'm feeling tired, scared, and irritated at the same time, and that is just not a pleasant combination of feels.

"By the way I'm letting it slide this time, but don't try to pull a fast one again. Why'd you write down that you were 21?"

Now I was even more confused. "What do you mean? It's December 2016, I was born January of '95, that's 21 years difference."

The two cops just looked at each other with a combination of concern and being weirded out. "Yeah, Joey go see if you can get one of the EMTs or something over here."

He turned his attention to me again. This ought to be great.

"You're about to tell me that's wrong too aren't you?"

"Yeah. It's December 27th 2010."

Well double fuck. I take back what I said about this situation not being a movie made of ass. Because apparently that's exactly what it's trying its hardest to be.

"I was gonna ask if I could try and call my folks but something tells me that's probably not going to work either."

Several phone calls later proved me right. And that was followed by about an hour of various questions and tests. Making sure I didn't have any unexplained head wounds and such. Also took a small blood sample and a piss one for good measure. Something about making sure we weren't drugged. Which I can't really complain about I guess; it makes sense.

Although...

I had to admit I was almost certain that weirder shit was going on. I didn't think I'd be able recall the last five and a half years with clarity if that were the case.

After about 20 more minutes, judging by the clock on the wall I was sitting with Ian and Nick in the main area. We weren't being placed under arrest, so they didn't throw us in a cell just yet. Judging by the other guy's faces they went through something similar. I probably had a similarly vacant yet vaguely horrified stare going on.

"So...don't hate me for this...but I don't think we're in real life anymore."

Nick and Ian just stared at me for a couple of seconds before they broke into a bit of giggles. Even a few bona fide laughs. Success!

"It's the wrong year...and I apparently legally don't exist," Ian sighed. "Lemme guess they told you guys similar shit too?"

"Dude, you at least stayed the right race," Nick countered. "Now I'm a white guy with the last name 'Ma.'"

"Actually how did that go?" I asked.

"Could've been worse; I made up some shit about being a quarter chinese on my dad's side to explain the last name. Turned out about as well as I could've hoped, and even my garbage Cantonese was convincing. What about you Ian?"

Ian chuckled. "I made a fucking error."

"Those aren't comforting words, especially out of your mouth. What'd you do?" Nick asked.

"I'm just answering the officer's questions as best I can, and they brought in an EMT for like 5 minutes because they thought I was crazy. So I had the brilliant fucking idea to try and make a joke. I asked him if there's a specific medical term for forgetting the date. He said he didn't know, so I said that I should google it."

Wait. That doesn't sound that bad. "What went so terribly wrong?" I asked.

"The second to last word in my previous sentence. 'Google.' Y'know, the company that is so fuckhuge and plays such a vital part of the internet economy and, fuck, just general usage that its goddamn name became a verb? Doesn't exist."

Well triple fuck! If I'm about to find out that Yahoo doesn't exist too, I might have to scream.

We lapsed back into an uneasy silence after that little factoid reveal. I'm just trying really hard not to freak out at this point, which, given the circumstances I think I could be forgiven for. I was simply hoping shit didn't get any weirder. Last thing I need right now. I felt the urge to say something stupid just to break the lingering tension.

"I can't believe real life is fucking dead."

Nick smiled at that. "Or as Freddie would've put it, ~'Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?~" Ian finished up the line, and then we just started singing the song in it's entirety. It's a good song, and you don't just not finish it if you've already sung the intro. That just wasn't a thing that was done.

It was pretty great too when a couple of the other officers joined in. Queen's always a good choice.

Unfortunately the air was taken right back out of our sails when a group of four paramilitary looking dudes just rolled up into the station. Their armor looked fairly heavy duty, and while I can totally see a shotgun being loaded with beanbag rounds, I have no fucking clue why the dude in the back needs a flamethrower. Also, I felt like I should recognize the big white 'PRT' emblazoned on everything, but I was drawing a blank on where I'd seen it before. Quigley popped around the corner and waved him over to us.

Oh hell no. "Wait, what? Why? Why did you call a swat team?" I asked.

"Well they ain't swat. Not all of the tests are done yet, but the ones that have come back came back clean. So that leaves two options. Either all three of you went crazy at the same time, which I highly doubt, or something else is going on here. These guys are here to just ask you a few more questions over at the PRT building. Relax, you're not in trouble."

"S-so why do they need a flamethrower?"

They guy holding the flamethrower laughed at me. "It's not a flamethrower, it's a foam sprayer. Perfectly safe." Oh. Well that's better I guess. I'm still trying to remember where I saw the 'PRT' before, but I didn't want to look stupid by asking just yet. It was on the tip of my tongue.

"Alright so...what do you guys do differently from the cops again? Why can't you just ask us here?"

"Well, we specialize in cases involving parahuman activity. Officers Quigley and Nowicki thought that if what you told them was true, you might be victims of a parahuman power."

Parahuman power. Those words actually left his mouth. I snapped my head up to look him straight in the eye. Parahuman Response Team. So _that's_ what the fucking acronym stood for. My mouth went a little dry.

What am I on now? Quadruple fuck? Might as well call it fuck squared at this point.

We were in the wormverse. There was no way we were in the setting of that superhero campaign where everything was awful and out to kill you. Like actually there.

Was there?

The next couple of hours passed by in a blur for me. They asked a bunch of questions. What do we remember, did we feel anything akin to a headache, do we remember hearing voices of any kind, or having weird urges to do things?

They also had us undress, and poked and prodded along our skin, as if they were looking for something.

Did we recognize this villain? This one? Any of these 12? The Simurgh? What day did we think it was? Where did we think we were from?

And those were just the questions that made sense. At some point I just collapsed on the desk in front of me and started snoring. Getting your ass dragged into what should have remained a fictional world really takes a lot out of you.

Detective Hanrahan started her 4th pass of the bathroom with the blacklight. She'd already checked pretty much everywhere; toilets, urinals, sinks, hell she even checked the ceiling just to be completely sure. It felt like a useless gesture at this point. The three kids that allegedly woke up here with no recollection of the hows or the whys weren't injured, so she was all but certain at this point there was nothing to find on that front.

But that didn't mean her job was done. The kids mentioned that the lights were on in here when they woke up. Right now, all of the bulbs in that room were shattered, and the housing was cracked and yellowed. Furthermore, several of the faucets and flushing handles looked rusted, and the paint on the walls was peeling in several places.

Which was extremely weird considering that she'd been here with her boyfriend only a few months ago when he'd scored tickets to the wildcard game back in early October. He'd used this exact bathroom; they'd all recently been completely redone; new sinks, new coat of paint, new flooring, new everything.

12 weeks was not enough time for this level of disrepair. Hanrahan spoke into her walkie talkie.

"Dispatch, finished the conventional sweep. Nothing showed up on it, but there's...damage in here. Requesting additional sweep with the kappa sensor...and, fuck it, gimme the whole suite. Geiger counter and everything."

 **Written by Verlotorium**

Her purpose had been simple.

She delivered an impulse, something that couldn't be tracked with any conventional devices, then a steady feedback to collect information.

This impulse, spread out over innumerable targets at once, served as her primary sense. Each target is conceptualized in the context of twelve to eighty years of history. More time, more feedback from the steady feed of information, and the images clarify. Discard the useless elements, maintain the pivotal ones.

Deciphering, searching for the key points. The convergent strange attractors in fields of endless chaos.

Possibilities, as another jumble of images. These clarify as the others do, as eventualities are discarded, the targets around her come into focus.

One target comes into full focus, and their existence is now visible, from the moment of their birth until the time they disappear from sight.

Often, this is the point of their death. Other times, they disappear into periods of darkness, obscured by another power.

Often, this is not a true obstacle, if she has had time to look. There are the fulcrum points of their lives. Crises, themes, decisions, fears and aspirations are clearly visible. The individual is understood well enough that their actions can be guessed after they disappear from view.

When a stone is thrown into darkness. It can be safely assumed that it will continue traveling until it hits something.

She hibernates, allowing her to collect constant information about the environment over a series of passes. The world could be visualized as a series of billiard balls, one striking another, striking another in turn. Diminishing returns with each target struck.

She sees the stone fly out of the darkness, and she can determine where it was thrown from.

Suddenly, the stone disappears into the darkness.

If she were human, she would have reacted with alarm. Her endocrine system would have activated, secreting additional hormones to create emotions of fear and stress.

But she was not human.

She continued to drift along the thermosphere, orbiting at a steady seven kilometers per second.

More points of darkness began to propagate, metaphorical spheres of synthetic resin colliding, then disappearing from the topographical map she had modeled.

The darkness propagated from the eastern and western points of the region designated as the "United States", and expanded to consume the entire continent. Lines of darkness continued to cascade down the time stream.

She used her core function, her power, sweeping the time stream and region for probable causes. The trajectories continued to flow as expected on the narrow scope. However, the gaps continued to expand and suddenly...

She was blind. Blind to an entire region of space and time.

She inclined her head, ever so slightly in interest.

* * *

Please read and review.


	5. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

 **Disclaimer:** Worm is the property of John McCrae aka Wildbow. I do not claim to own Worm or any of its characters. The OCs belong to my Weaver Dice group though.

 **A/N** : This chapter is actually supposed to be way longer, but the election upset has hit me like a mental sledgehammer. I've legitimately lost sleep over the results, and everything I've written over the past two days has looked like a mess. There are many parts of the subsequent scenes that I want to go over when I'm actually sound of mind.

I guess this is enough to put out as a short chapter though.

* * *

 _"I'm sorry, have we met before?"_

Those words hit me hard. A lot harder than they rightfully should have.

Amy and I had one _hell_ of a patchy start, but we'd become fairly good friends in the months since the incident at Leviathan. I immediately suspected some sort of Stranger effect was at play. That, or I was dreaming. About a second after I processed what she'd just said I pinched myself under my bedsh- OW.

I flinched in pain. Okay Taylor, this probably isn't a dream. Let's go with the Stranger until we have a better explanation. Either that or this was some sort of elaborate prank.

Experience took over, and I stopped for a moment to sweep the room. The calendar was set to April 2011.

April of 2011. Amy in her classic regalia. Brockton Bay.

Hopefully this wasn't some sort of realistic dream-world conjured up by the monstrosity that was flying a mile up in the air. The Simurgh's powers were enough of a nightmare to think about and the world definitely didn't need another monster like that.

So... what the fuck was going on?

Panacea looked at me expectantly as the doctors and nurses who'd rushed into my room muttered amongst themselves.

I saw a flash of blonde, and suddenly _Glory Girl_ walked into the room. It was a testament to how good I'd become at bluffing that I only raised a single eyebrow when I saw a fucking _dead_ girl walk into my hospital room. In a city that had been condemned months ago no less.

"Ames? Holy shit. She's actually up. Another notch on the belt for my amazing sister!"

She flashed a smile at Amy.

I continued to gape at the two.

Alright. This was incredibly surreal, but play along until you figure out what the situation is, Taylor.

I composed myself, before giving out an exaggerated squeal.

"Sorry about that. I uh, I'm one of your fans. New Wave's fans. Oh god, is that Glory Girl? _THE_ Vicky Dallon? This is awkward. Hi."

I felt my cheeks turn red, but that was more from the pressure and surrealness of the situation than anything else.

"Autograph?" I eeped out, continuing to play up my part of the star-struck fangirl. I had quite a few of those myself.

Panacea simply stared at me for a moment, before groaning and palming her face. Glory Girl on the other hand…

"Sure thing! What would you like it on?"

"Just a signature on anything would be alright" I said with a small smile.

"Doctors. Victoria…" Panacea started, "Could you please give us some privacy for a minute?"

Doctor Moskowitz looked at her inquisitively.

"Is this about the inquiry? About the phenomenon?" the doctor spoke after a moment.

"Yes it is, Doctor. I think it would be for the best if I could talk to the patient alone for a minute or two."

Nodding, Doctor Moskowitz beckoned towards the door and the doctors and nurses filed out of the room. Soon, it was just the two of us in the room.

Amy took a seat by my bed.

"Can I have your permission to perform a check-up?"

I nodded in affirmation.

She touched me on my arm and stared down in focus focus.

Laying down on the hospital bed, I looked at her and frowned.

It was definitely Amy Dallon sitting on the chair in front of me, but... she seemed so tired. She looked disillusioned and jaded, and the dark bags under her eyes revealed her enormous levels of stress and fatigue. It really unnerved me to see her like this.

Despite the lingering sharp pain I'd experienced from pinching myself, I still wasn't convinced that I was actually in _Brockton Bay_ and conscious _._ I hoped that this was simply all an illusion in my head - the alternatives were much worse.

"Hmm, everything looks fine now. You're practically the picture of health, Miss Hebert" she stated neutrally.

She furrowed her eyebrows for a second before continuing to address me.

"Okay, Miss Hebert, please be straight with me. If it would be alright with you, I would like to take a moment to to ask you some questions."

I noted that she still had her hand on my arm. Well this was going to be interesting. At the same time, I groaned internally, expressing it with a grimace.

Her power was broken beyond belief. Apart from the ability to literally create _life_ , it was a little-known fact that her secondary Thinker power allowed her to serve as a walking polygraph test. A lie detector test that was actually reliable no less. If she had really been healing me for three days straight, it was almost a given that she'd found my active Corona Pollentia.

"You do not have to divulge any information if you do not feel comfortable doing so" Panacea continued, sensing my trepidation.

"It's alright, go ahead. And please, call me Taylor. What would you like to know? "

"First of all...are you aware that you are a parahuman?"

"Yeah…" I trailed off. "I had a pretty nasty trigger event last winter, and I became a parahuman. I'd always wanted to be a hero, but I didn't feel like the Wards were right for me. Truthfully told, I HAVE been patrolling the streets on my own recently, and I even managed to leave an ABB leader or two for the authorities to pick up this month. I always did admire our independent groups you know, like yours."

Half-truths upon half-truths, but it'd pass her Thinker ability. I _did_ admire New Wave, at least until I found out about the heaps of emotional abuse they'd subjected Amy to. That was also before Lisa dissected Glory Girl's power, and laid out the fact that Amy had been effectively _Mastered_ by her adoptive sister.

She nodded, before continuing,

"Both the Protectorate and some members of New Wave couldn't help but notice the alarming similarity between the effect that afflicted you and the power of a...rather notorious supervillain we'd long thought deceased. Can you remember nothing at all about what happened before the ambulance picked you up?"

"I'm sorry," I apologized. "I was completely serious. I really don't remember what happened before I woke up here. I was walking down a desolate street..." _Due to a giant fucking citadel in the sky_ "..then suddenly, all I could feel was pain, and I mean _pain._ The next thing I knew, I was waking up to you and the hospital staff rushing into the room."

Amy bit her lip.

"I'll be honest, Taylor. We found you in civilian clothes, so this could have just been a random attack. Is there anything else you can tell me? Something that I can relay to the Protectorate? The degrading time loop that we found you in has quite a few people worried."

In case this was anything but a dream or god-forbid, an illusion wrought on by an Endbringer, there was an easy alibi I could stick to. Assuming the world was consistent with my memories, that is.

"Well…" I started, "I've heard rumors that the ABB recently acquired a new cape. A tinker, to be precise. Apparently her power allows her to create bombs with a wide variety of effects, and unfortunately time and space warping also fits into that portfolio."

She clenched her teeth grimly, muttering "Oh Great" under her breath. She stood up, and took her hand off my arm.

"Alright then, I'll leave you to get some rest for now Taylor. I'll file the paperwork and get you out of here by tonight. Drink plenty of fluids, eat your vegetables, and so on, okay?"

Amy began to head towards the door, before turning to address me one more time.

"You might want to consider finding a team if you want to continue the hero life, by the way. Solo heroes don't make it very far, statistically speaking. What if I hadn't been able to heal you on time?

 _I already have a team. The best one a girlcould ask for, and... you're supposed to be on it._

"Thank you" I spoke sincerely, "I'll keep it in mind."

It hurt, watching Panacea walk around with those deep, baggy lids and soul-less eyes. I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

She opened the door, and left the room.

...

Okay Taylor. Now that you have some room to breathe…

Think.

I pinched myself again. Yup, it definitely still felt like I was awake. Nothing in my view was fuzzy or remotely dreamlike. Could it have been possible that a Stranger implanted half a year's worth of false memories in my head? The experiences felt so real...

I glanced over at the bedside table, where I noticed a remote for the TV screen that hung at the end of the room. Might as well check on the news while waiting to be let out.

I put on my glasses and clicked the "on" button, and the TV immediately opened up to a local news channel.

 ** _Live Coverage: Ongoing Supervillain Robbery at Brockton Bay Central Bank. Hostages confirmed._**

I dropped the remote in shock as a blanket of darkness spewed out from the bank.


	6. Session 2

**Disclaimer : **Neither Wanton Construct nor Verlotorium own Worm. Worm is the property of John McCrae aka Wildbow.

* * *

 **Session Two: Nick Ma**

 **Written by WantonConstruction**

Yep. Clark was out like a damn lightbulb, but I wasn't about to hold that against him. I swear to god they've literally gone through all the possible ways to ask 'where are you from?' and that's annoying enough to go through once. We did the same song and dance with three different people, and I was getting violently sick of their shit by now. At least the woman sitting in front of us now seemed to be done with her questions.

"Well after the number of tedious questions we've asked you, it seems only fair that you'd have a couple for us. I'll answer to the extent that I can."

"What the hell was the half strip and the metal detector thing for?" I thought that would be a fair place to start.

"We were checking to see if you are parahumans, or otherwise affected by a parahuman power," she said.

"Okay...so what's the verdict?"

"Well I can safely say you're not parahumans," she began.

"Didn't need you to tell me that," I said before I could stop myself.

"Don't be so sure Mr. Ma. I've been in this job for the better part of a decade and I've already seen well more than a lifetime's worth of weirdness. As far as the second part, we won't have anything more concrete unless you consent to a CT scan but the three of you are giving off very minute levels of radiation."

Are we really going to start checking off cliches for dimension hopping bullshit now? Because fuck that.

"How much?" Ian asked. He didn't bother picking up his head out of his hands. At least Clark had woken up a bit now and started paying attention again.

"Nothing to be concerned about from a medical standpoint; it's barely detectable above the amount the ground itself gives off, but it's there."

Well that was good. And we needed good news however it came right now. Still. "So, what does that mean for us? What do you think happened?"

"Well, the most sound theory we have right now is that you were affected by what we call a Master power. Master powers come in two general flavors. One involves making/controlling non-human minions of one stripe or another. The second type is powers which deal directly with controlling humans. Things like giving orders that you have to obey, altering how you think and feel, and other less than palatable effects.

"We've seen strange side effects on people after they've been exposed to that kind of power, and while not especially typical, the radiation is actually on the more tame side of things that we've seen. Mr. Ma, Mr. Mueller, and Mr. Horowitz, it's entirely possible, and unfortunately probable that your memories have been tampered with in a permanent fashion."

I did my best to look properly shocked. Ian, Clark and I knew that what she was saying was factually wrong after all, but only because we'd read the story this world was borne out of. Or at least Ian did. Clark and I mostly just played in the tabletop campaign, but still, we both knew waaaay more about this place than we had any right to. We knew that Blasto's first name was Rey for example, and we knew there was some kind of funky conspiracy bullshit out there involving "C" or Cauldron. Pretty sure these guys didn't.

Like, on the one hand, you have a random asshole going around memory wiping people because they can. On the other you have 3 dudes coming into what they know to be a fictional world. While the Wormverse is a fried bullshit sandwich with how fucking broken some of the powers are, this is some Thanos-with-infinity-gauntlet level shit. Like, concretely less likely. Occam's razor from there.

Now, for the important questions.

"So what happens to us? Can we get IDs? Have we, I dunno, demonstrated that we very likely were citizens at some point in time? What's the precedent for stuff like this?"

The police officer stroked her chin for a second.

"Well, I will admit this is on the grayer parts of the law since you're gonna have a hard time proving physical presence here as a minor, but it might be possible to process you as immigrants and just leave out the home country part. Pass a citizenship and GED tests, and you might be able to find a place to stay and a job fairly soon." She looked at the clock. "I dunno about you guys, but I'm getting pretty famished and breakfast is almost over. We should be able to get you some food down in the cafeteria."

-ooo-

The food was solidly 'aight'. Not great, not shit. Wasn't IHOP, but then again it also wasn't Denny's.

My friend Jon put it best last time I saw him: 'Denny's is not a place you go to, but rather a place you wind up. It's not a destination; it's a consequence.'

Fuck man, speaking of consequences, still had no idea what they were going to be like for me. Shit's already too weird, and we haven't even gotten off the ground yet. Feels like the reverse of The Matrix if you think about it; we get put into a simulation from the real world, instead of the other way around.

With two key differences being that we weren't even aware it happened (let alone wanting to do something this crazy) and we didn't know that this place wasn't effectively real. No reason to suspect that the rules of death and mortality have changed just yet.

I shivered at that last thought. What if something ridiculously fucked up happened at home? What if, I dunno, the fearmongers on the news had a point and some terrorist cell managed to sneak a nuke into NYC overnight and fucking murdered everyone and we all died in our sleep? Is this some weird limbo-kinda deal while we're being processed for reincarnation or something?

Or, what if I somehow slipped into a coma overnight, and this is a coma dream that just feels waaaay too much like reality?

Too spooky to think about right now. Alright, let's change the angle.

Ian wolfed his food down and was on his third cup of coffee. Clark was nursing some flavored oatmeal, and I was polishing off a waffle with bargain brand syrup. I looked at the clock and realized none of us had spoken to each other in...20 minutes. We'd all just been sort of vacantly staring at our food/the table while lost in thought. The other guys must've been taking it harder than me.

Still. All that shit was gonna have to wait. Priority right now was the base of Maslow's hierarchy. We just got food, but we were going to need shelter and a place to sleep, and immediately after that comes employment. We had people to talk to, probably tests to take and forms to fill out….and lines to wait in to be told to come..back….next….

Oh hi there existential dread! I thought I was done with you. Asshole.

The thoughts hits me like a train - we could totally end up homeless tonight and be looking at a best case scenario involving six months of homelessness. I realized quickly that I had no guarantee I was going to get lunch or dinner. I flat out had no idea where we were going to sleep tonight. Or if we were going to sleep tonight.

Dammit brain. Fuck you.

-ooo-

Ohhhhh god. Fear fucking confirmed, good game, get rolled.

We went back to the regular-people police and the past 8 hours have not been fun. Turns out that even after skipping like 70% of the paperwork...without some serious string pulling, the earliest we could get proper citizenship again would be in 6 months. A process which could easily turn into 18 months.

One of the cops who talked to me in the first place dropped by to have a quick chat and shoot the breeze for a bit while he waited on some searches to finish. He ended up hanging around for a solid 45 minutes past the end of his shift, just talking about random shit with us while walking us through the forms.

Felt weird though, because the official story apparently is that yes, we did get mindfucked, and no one knows yet why or how. Because that's actually plausible now. Dude showed me a video on his phone that was 4 months old of Blasto's plant dudes robbing a damn pharmacy. It wasn't a movie clip. It fucking happened. A damn 14 year old kid probably uploaded the shaky footage that I was looking at.

Seemed genuinely upset when he left. That was a couple hours ago now. I stared at the next sheet in front of me. Almost done for now, and we'd have to wait about a week before the next part could start.

Andy Dufrense made up a person using nothing but letters while inside Shawshank, but fucked up part is he still had four advantages on us; he had shelter and a bed, he had food, he had some measure of hygiene, and he had like a decade of experience laundering money for a corrupt douche of a warden.

I mean, look at how fucked this is. I'm sitting in a chair staring at line on form number too-fucking-many filling out what I little information remained accurate or "verifiable" about myself for the umpteenth time, which at this point was fucking limited to what I looked like, and Clark and I weren't even sure of that anymore.

Deadass, I'm weighing the risks and benefits of literally walking outside and breaking a window so they'll have a reason to jail me because hey, I'll have a fucking bed.

Ian chuckled. "Would you rather be homeless or go to prison?"

What the fuck, Ian?

"Okay what's with the salt?" I asked. 'How are you reading my mind' is the question I didn't ask.

He gave another dry laugh. "Unless somebody pulls something out of their ass real soon, we're going to have to actually answer that question. It's like playing 'would you rather,' except y'know, your answer counts. Might as well give it some solid thought."

Not a bad point. Hell we might be able to make out alright with a bit of future knowledge.

That train of thought kinda got thrown out the window as Nowicki showed up at the door.

"Officer Nowicki, is there a problem?" asked the lawyer that was finishing rounding all of our shit up.

"I'm off the clock right now, so Mr. Nowicki will do" he answered, before turning to address us. "You guys don't have a place to stay tonight, do you?"

Welp. Looks like I should've started that line of thought sooner. At least we have a lawyer here with us now.

"Actually, we were just about to ask about that. What's the protocol for that? How fucked are we?"

"Well the good news is that, given what we've gotten so far, it's totally possible to spin up a work visa for you guys. Should help with finding a place to stay once you get a job," the lawyer began. "Unless you had something to add Mr. Nowicki?"

The guy stood there for a few long moments trying to start his sentence several times, but he seemed to be having a lot of trouble with the first syllable.

"Listen, I know a guy-" wow that sounds immediately shady "-He's a family friend, known him for a while, and he's a straight shooter. Point is some fucking cape prick came through back in early October, and the bar he owns got wicked totalled, and-" he turned to look at us for the pitch "- Buncha guys helped him set up shop again, so he's bought a new place, along with the space above it. He's still short on help, and if you guys can do some manual labor, he might be able to set you up with a room for a bit."

Alright. Wow. How the fuck do you respond to that? Shit. I looked over to Ian for a second, who seemed about as shocked as I was, because this seemed way too good to be true. Like, I'm at the point where I'm fully expecting this dude's friend to be Jason Voorhees or something.

Clark broke in with his question to the lawyer first. "Can that happen? I'm really not looking forwards to sleeping in a box outside. Wet cardboard is completely awful."

"Well, as long as he actually owns the deed which encompasses the room you guys end up crashing in, there shouldn't be any problems immediately. If he wants to employ you guys, that's a little more delicate and you might wanna wait for at least the temporary documents. Simply letting you stay there shouldn't be a thumb in anyone's eye though."

Something about that bothered me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

"What about once we're passed the realm of 'immediately?'" Ian asked next.

"Well if the situation works out, after a few weeks you should think about getting some sort of renting agreement hammered out. I'm not gonna speak on that would look like because that's outside my field of expertise. If you want to move around though, I don't anticipate too many issues with trying to spin up some temporary papers when that time comes either."

Damn. We're being given as close to a real life get-outta-jail-free card as you can get. This level of luck is huge. So why the fuck does it feel so goddamn skeevy? I sat there for what couldn't have been longer than another 8 seconds thinking about it, but it felt like half an hour. Adrenaline was going, heart was racing; one part of me was sitting there screaming 'don't look the fucking look the gift horse in the mouth' and the other is convinced that I'm actually in a slasher film and this guy's trying to get us in the haunted house.

"I'm sorry, but I gotta ask. Why would you do something like that for us? I'm not complaining at all, it's just...extraordinarily kind of you, and I don't know why you're doing it."

Dude's acting way outta character from the cops that I've seen back home. I kinda expected them to be raging assholes and this is seriously throwing me off.

His face fell a bit before he spoke. "It's a long story. Short version is I've been at this job for two decades now. I grew up here. I've seen firsthand that people can be real fucking douchebags when they want to, and the fucking capes just make that shit insultingly easy. They walk all over us every day and there ain't a lot we can do about it. You see enough dudes who can laugh off 50 cal machine gun fire or fuse you to a goddamn tree and you start feeling a little hopeless. Like you can't actually do your fucking job to protect and serve. You can't do anything to help.

"I look at you three, and for the first time in a while, there is something I can actually do. If you still wanna give it a shot, that is."

Makes me feel a bit like an asshole now, but at least he sounded sincere. Clark and Ian looked relatively down with the idea, and I liked the idea of a bed. Or at least a couch. I was Vice Pres in a frat after all. A couch'll do just fine.

-ooo-

The cop who had just secured first place in the nation in bro-rank gave us a few bucks to get some tickets for the red line. Instructions were to hop off at Andrew station, and then to head north until we found the "painfully Irish looking place named 'O'Houlihan's'." Seemed easy enough, and we had what looked like a half hour ride ahead of us.

I reflexively reached for my DS for some Monster Hunter grinding to kill the time. Didn't know why I would try when I didn't even have my wallet, but I did. It was the little things that hurt all that much more sometimes.

About 10 minutes in I got sick of the silence, and Clark and Ian both looked like they were thinking harder than we could afford to. Yeah, the whole situation was fucked but we couldn't turn inwards too much. Might as well try and get their attention.

"So…..what if we think of the whole thing like an unreasonably high stakes game?"

"What if we did what now?" Clark asked after about a second, in slightly too loud a voice. "Oh right. Real life is fucking dead, what do?"

"Right. What if….iunno...what if we treat it like some weird indie game that just came out on steam last week? And its just Nintendo hard, and you only get a single life, and the game corrupts itself if you die. But, like we got the chance to read some parts of the wiki before hand?"

Ian raised an eyebrow. "O….k? Not sure where you're going with this but go on?"

"Well who do we got? Taylor's the protag isn't she? Can you see any way to drop some oracle shit on her and get on her good side or something?"

Ian laughed. "Shooting that high out the gate Nick? Couple of problems off the bat there. First glaring issue is I don't know where Brockton Bay actually is. It's not a city that actually exists, and it's location is never specified other than 'northeastern US, with slightly more temperate winters,' so until I get on a computer I can't even narrow down the state. Secondly, I think it's late December right now? Yeah, Taylor doesn't even have powers yet. And she won't go caping until like fucking April."

"Right, the whole origin story thing has to happen. When's that?"

"In like 5 to 10 days from now I think. Just after New Year's I think. We can do fuck all about it if you were wondering."

Might as well have some fun with the what-ifs.

"What? All we gotta do is steal someone's phone and car, and just drive up to the school and plow through the front doors, find Taylor and be like 'come with us if you want to live.' Channel the Governator. Easy."

Earned a few giggles with that one.

"Yeah but, real talk, we don't wanna run into capes if we can help it. Especially masters, strangers, or particularly for us, thinkers."

"Will their brains fucking explode or something?" asked Clark.

Ian leaned back in his seat. "Honestly I've no fucking idea what's going to happen. Best case scenario, they just don't figure it out. If they do it's only gonna make everything that much harder to deal with, and we're already on a... hard time limit."

He drifted somberly for a second. Time limit? Oh.

"Right. Leviathan."

Endbringers. Overpowered pieces of shit grinding humanity into the ground.

Fuck Brad for statting out a monster that could go four times in one turn cycle by the way.

I mean there's the typical Brad-level "Killer GM" crap and then there's this shit. In a lot of ways Worm was even worse than the Call of Cthulhu campaign. I can't believe I talked him into running a superhero campaign. Should've figured he would've pulled out this crap.

"No, uh….y-yeah, right. Leviathan" Ian stammered. "Memory serves, he's hitting Brockton Bay...middle of May? Something or other. And there's actually a Simurgh attack coming up in February. Ain't that a bitch, can't fucking warn anyone about those either."

"Wait can't we? That sounds like something we should figure out a way to do," I wondered.

"You have Dragon, the AI who makes IBM's Watson look like a fucking etch-a-sketch using dedicated farms to watch the Endbringers constantly, and she's only ever been able to predict an attack up to half an hour in advance. No thinker that I recall in canon has been able to predict them either except maybe Dinah, and still that's a long shot. We're three dudes the PRT think have had their memories more or less wiped; best case scenario is actually that no one believes us. In the event that we do manage to convince someone, the Simurgh in particular is gonna notice that, and she will not take kindly to someone out-cheesing her."

Shit. Ian's got a point. "Still there's gotta be something we can do. Who's in Boston that we can hit up?"

"That I remember? You have Accord and his crew, who I really don't want to fuck with in any capacity,"

"Accord was the lawful insane dude?"

"Putting it mildly, yeah. Pretty sure Blasto's shop is in town too. I know Weld is here at least for now….Hunch gets name dropped in a paragraph or two, but I don't remember what he actually does….and I've no idea who else is on the roster for the local Protectorate, or if it was even mentioned. I'm definitely forgetting some other details, but the saving grace is that it's not like Brockton Bay where there's literally like 20+ aggressive villain capes that we have to worry about."

"So, do we actually have to give a shit about anything other than not dying?" asked Clark.

"Y...yes. Eventually. But to do that we need to have resources. If the cop was being legit, we lucked the fuck out in a major way to not start from the absolute rock bottom, but we got a ways to go."

We lapsed into an easier silence after that.

-ooo-

When we got off at our stop, Clark hesitated for a second.

"Guys, I just had a thought."

"Congratulations, how's it feel?" was my immediate response. You can't just leave an opening like that and expect me not to take it dude.

"We're effectively undocumented minors without even fake IDs, about to try and go to a fucking tavern on word of mouth that the owner will let us crash there and build our lives back up. This is literally the start of every D&D campaign ever."

There was a moment of dead silence before we all just started losing our shit laughing our dicks off. Because if that isn't at least a little bit poetic, I don't know what is.

Everything had gone up shit's creek pretty quickly, but what could we do but make the best of it? If only we had Jackie or Alex with their compulsive munchkin bullshit.

"Well..." I said, with more than an ounce of false bravado. "Let's put on the tryhard pants then."


	7. Clarification and Character Sheet 1

**More WoG/Clarification**

"Nick" played Impulse, a speedster who had a blue aura that could ignore laws of momentum. His power-set also let him stop-halt from motion into an invulnerable timelocked state, Legend style. He could also move the aura to other people on a touch, slowing their movements and perception while sacrificing the active use of his power.

Mover 4, Breaker, Striker 1

"Ian" played Crown, a plasmakinetic Cauldron amnesiac who turns into a 15 foot tall hulking plasma being of pure destruction when he's angry. Firepower somewhere between Purity and Sundancer, and nigh invulnerability at the temporary cost of most of his sanity and lucidity.

Cherish got ahold of him at some point. Think about that for a moment.

Blaster 2, Shaker 1 / Brute 7, Blaster 8, Shaker 8

"Clark" played Antares, a flamboyant street performer who loved to prank supervillains and upload the videos to social media and streaming sites. Has the ability to accelerate non living objects and systems in his line of sight towards its highest macrostate of entropy.

Shaker 2, later upgraded to a Shaker 6 rating and colloquially referred to himself as the "anti-Shaker".

 **Timeline**

-Taylor returned to the day after the Lung battle, where Tattletale was pitching membership to her.

-The SI trio arrived in late December, 2010.


	8. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** Worm is the property of Wildbow aka John McCrae. I don't own Worm or any of the characters apart from the ones from my Weaver Dice campaign.

* * *

 **Chapter 3**

 **Taylor Hebert**

I ripped the wires and needles out of my body and rolled sideways out of the bed. I quickly tossed off my hospital gown, and threw on my street clothes which had been left in a neat pile off on the side. Sloppily gathering the rest of my stuff together, I rushed towards the window. I grunted as I stumbled forward and nearly fell on the ground a couple of steps out from my bed.

 _Fuck, I've gotten shorter._

I was still freakishly tall for a girl my age, but I'd definitely lost at least two, maybe inches of height from what I was quickly getting used to, and my balance was a little off from the difference.

Making my way to the window, I peered outside and noted that I was only on the second floor of the hospital..

A chill ran down my spine as I surveyed the skyline. _No fucking way._

It was genuinely Brockton Bay, in all of its glorious urban decay. I stepped away from the window in total shock, and my heart thundered rapidly in my chest.

I was still a little addled and confused, but my mind quickly raced to a conclusion.

Either I had either somehow traveled well over half a year into the past, or this was the buildup to a seriously fucked up Master/Stranger moment. If this a dream, it was an unnervingly realistic one.

I frowned as I moved around the windowsill, inspecting my own body. Even half a year ago, I had been _rail thin_. Gone was the lean musculature I'd developed after months of fighting, training, and an active lifestyle. Once again, I was Taylor Hebert the beanpole who couldn't fit into a damn B-cup.

Well, at least I was in a way better mental state now than I was when I'd first joined up with the Undersiders. I still didn't know how I ended up in the hospital, but I had plenty of time to figure that out later. I reached out with my power, noting that my range had been unchanged. I could feel the telltale feeling of bugs a good six blocks away from the hospital - a small blessing at least. Taking a second to compose myself again, I began to think.

Was I really in Brockton Bay? Was this all one screwed up hallucination an enemy was putting me through? I didn't know.

What I did know was if my memories were correct, this was the day I'd fatefully distracted the Protectorate by robbing a fucking bank. This was the day Impulse and Antares had hand-delivered a child into Coil's filthy hands.

If my memories were correct, I had maybe half an hour at most to get to my destination. The kidnapping and enslavement of Dinah Alcott had been one of our greatest regrets as capes, and Impulse had been haunted by his decision. As a result,the speedster had kept a detailed account of the kidnapping in a video log, which I had reviewed a couple of times.

Even if this all turned out to be one big illusion or dream, I could **not** let things slide if they were going to go as I expected. If this was all a hallucination and I was wrong, well, I had one hell of an explanation for Dad and any capes the Protectorate sent after me, but that could wait for now. If my memories weren't real...well, I had way bigger problems to worry about if that was the case.

My mind raced, already coming up with scenarios and ideas to rescue Dinah Alcott. I hadn't even heard the name until my debriefing with the Undersiders, so if she actually existed, I'd know that it wasn't all in my head. There was no way I could afford to sit through all the hospital red tape, knowing what was going on while the bank robbery played out on the TV. Looking out the window, I made my decision.

I oriented the fuzzy sensations I was getting from a swarm of flies in the hospital lobby, and suddenly I felt a pang of guilt. Dad was downstairs, wearing a worried expression on his face as he spoke to one of the doctors that had been in my room. Walking over to my bed, I scrawled a short apology letter under my pillow for Dad and the hospital staff, letting them know that I'd explain later.

I moved over to the bedsheets, and in the span of a little over a minute, I had tied together a makeshift rope that would easily halve the distance to the ground. Gently tossing my possessions down ahead of me, I shimmied down the makeshift rope and dropped down onto the ground below in a roll, pulling the bedsheets down along with me.

 _I'm coming for you, Dinah._

Hopefully I'd get to plead my case with Impulse and Antares and get them to stand down. Chimera would probably be my biggest obstacle, but it wouldn't be the first time I've had to take the shapeshifter down. I'd have to come up for one hell of an explanation for why I'd escaped from the hospital if I couldn't make this quick and clean, but consequences be damned.

-ooo-

 **Dinah Alcott**

Dinah clutched her head, tossing and turning on the sofa as old reruns of Saturday morning cartoons played in the background. She breathed quickly and shallowly, trying to focus as her eyes had split firmly into double vision yet again.

It hurt, it hurt a lot, but she **needed** to focus.

It'd been nearly two months ago when the headaches started. With the pain however, came a certain clarity.

Dinah had finally found the source of the headaches. When she asked herself a question, she would experience a small tickling sensation that felt like a wisp at the back of her mind that was followed by a surge of head-splitting pain. After over a month of crippling headaches that she didn't understand, she'd finally come to a realization.

When the headaches came, there was a willowy, wispy string that touched the back of her mind It was a subtle like a whisper, and it would inevitably be drowned out by the pain that followed. However, with time, Dinah finally learned to reach out to that wisp. Dinah finally understood what she could do.

Dinah could predict the future, at the painful price of debilitating headaches whenever she used her power.

Dinah had told her friends, but they hadn't believed her. Her parents had listened somewhat, but they were skeptical and had already chalked it up to another cry for attention. They had caved in to her decision to stay home a few days sick, since the doctors they had taken her to had been unable to find anything wrong with her. The doctors did note the increased levels of neurological activity in her head, however.

Dinah's primary goal in taking this short "vacation" was to improve control over the power. Getting control over the power alone was not enough to warrant the amount of effort she was putting into using it right now. No. There was a prediction she had made that continued to hang over her head like a guillotine.

On an off-handed use of her power, she'd predicted that she had a ninety five point three percent of successfully asking her friend Shannon to hang out on the ninth of April. Then, she had checked the following weekend, and again.

 _0.837% chances that I will be able to meet up with Shannon tomorrow_

A spike of pain shot through her head. The numbers were still under 5%. They had fluctuated with her efforts, but...they had consistently been under 5% on this day.

 _89.648% chance that I will be alive after today_ she grimly noted. There was definitely a concrete threat to her life if she had a 10% chance of dying.

Her parents were both career-minded, hands off individuals. She understood that they did love her on an intellectual level, but negligent was putting their overall treatment of her generously. They provided the base of her needs more than adequately, but they had always been distant. Her parents relied on babysitters, tutors, and an immigrant Japanese nanny to do most of the heavy lifting as she grew up, and Miss Toriyama had been let go when she was eight. Dinah was mostly left alone after school for years, with only one or two close friends that attended rigorous ballet, etiquette, or fencing classes after school.

Her father was a businessman who supported her uncle Roy's administration, and he worked long hours and traveled frequently. Her mother worked in mass media, which required frequent night shifts.

Something was coming today, and she didn't know what. The only source of comfort she had was the private security detail that currently surrounded her home, but even that was a psychological boon more than anything else. Convincing her parents to hire security for her had only increased her chances by half a percentage point. Nothing she'd done leading up to this day had improved her odds by more than that.

Hopefully the miniscule chance she had up of making through the coming threat was enough.

Dinah suddenly felt a sharp spike of pain, and the numbers began to shift erratically in her head. It was definitely something she hadn't experienced before, but then again, she'd only been a parahuman for a short duration of time all things considered. Moments continued to pass and the numbers continued to jump, increasing by fractions of a percentage point every second.

For the first time in days, Dinah began to feel a spark of hope.

-ooo-

 **Newter**

Newter tapped his fingers impatiently as he watched the clock count down on the van's dashboard. He glanced over at Mel, who was wearing an innocuous-looking, ladylike sundress in lieu of her usual samurai-inspired battle regalia.

Nothing really gave her away as Faultline, the genius and mastermind behind their notorious mercenary crew. He was also dressed for inconspicuousness, or at least the closest he could get to it as a Case-53. With a bit of makeup, a wig, and a heavy trench coat, the average bystander wouldn't recognize him as anything but a regular human at a cursory glance.

"As you all know from our briefing, the target is currently home sick from school from a terrible case of migraine headaches. Her parents have hired a skeleton protection detail, numbering at a total of seven guards."

"What's the hold up? We're nearly half an hour behind schedule" one of Coil's mooks wondered out loud.

"Beats me" Newter responded, "The Undersiders have gotten the go-ahead though."

"So what's the plan, Faultline?" another one of Coil's mooks spoke up.

"Newter will move quietly through the perimeter, providing reconnaissance and mapping out the patrols. While he does this, I will move to the phone grid and disable the node leading into the Alcott residence. From there, we will rendezvous and disable the guards as quietly and efficiently as possible. Alpha team, you will storm the front of the residence with me, herding her to the back, where Newter or Gregor will along the two exit paths. Whoever encounters her first will sedate her and capture her for transport. There are to be zero lethal takedowns, and our squads are to maintain radio contact at all times. Understood, everyone?"

"Got it chief" Newter grunted, leaning back lackadaisical. His affirmation was echoed by the mercenaries in their white van.

It was a routine bag and grab assignment, all things considered. Mel continued to rattle off the plan while Gregor rolled the window down a little for some air. One of Coil's goons was the designated driver for the mission, and Labyrinth was left in the care of one of their new recruit as they went out on this mission.

A beep went off under Faultline's dress.

"Alright, there's the signal."

Another beep went off, and Faultline touched her communicator.

"Coil has just alerted us to intervention by an unknown independent hero patrol in this neighborhood. Be on a lookout, everyone. Newter, take point. We don't want to deal with any capes if we can help it, so let's make this quick."

Stepping out of the car, Newter flinched as a flurry of leaves brushed at his face, followed by a swarm of gnats and flies that quickly fell into a pile on the ground around him. It wasn't uncommon that insects would be drawn to the scent of his sweat, but it was still an impressive dozen flies or so that were strewn out all over the ground.

In any case, it was time to do his job. It sucked that it was a kid of all things they were kidnapping all things considered. But hey, Coil needed his leverage over the Mayor, and he was paying some good dollar. A suspicious amount, even, for an easy mission where nothing could possibly go wrong.

-ooo-

 **Dinah Alcott**

Dinah jolted in alarm as she heard a thud from outside, where one of the guards was posted. Subconsciously, she called on her power.

 _Chances that the source of that sound bears a threat to me._

The answer she got bolted her into action, and she quickly scrambled off the couch, throwing her blankets on the ground. Her eyes shifted around in panic, even as she rattled off questions for actions she could take. No matter what, the end result would be the same. She would run face-first into danger, and straight into the waiting hands of whoever or whatever wanted to do her harm.

Her skin crawled and she screamed in alarm as suddenly, a large number of flies, cockroaches, spiders, and centipedes swarmed out from all over the room. She stumbled backwards, tripping to fall back onto the couch on her rear as the bugs rearranged themselves into words on the wall in front of her.

 **YOU'RE IN DANGER**

 _Chances that whoever is controlling the insects is working with the threat?_

Zero percent.

The bugs rearranged themselves again.

 **WAIT 15 SECONDS**

And again.

 **THEN FOLLOW OUT -**

She gulped, sitting in attention as the arrows pointed towards the side window.

 _Chances that I will be safe following their directions?_

Seventy three point twenty four percent.

It was better odds than she'd gotten all week. Dinah counted to 'fifteen Mississippi' in her head, then she scrambled up to the window, opening it as she heard the front door slam open. Her veins raced with adrenaline as a group of men and a woman in a yellow sundress rushed into her house with silenced pistols drawn. The invaders spotted her and began to shout furiously amongst themselves as she struggled to climb out the window.

"Alright, where now? She mumbled to herself, heart racing in panic. She looked up to see another arrow on the fence pointing towards the back of the house, next to a gap in the fence.

Dinah dashed the way the arrow pointed as one of the men scrambled up out the behind her, while another pair dashed around the front of the house towards the alley. Her heart sank - there was no way she would be able to outrun a squad of grown men.

The men from the front caught up to the man who was going through the window, and a rain of falling black specks spilled down from the rooftop. The three men who had been chasing her promptly collapsed onto the ground, tongues lolling out with dazed expressions on their faces, even as the woman braked and hopped back from the men between them.

"Shit!" the woman exclaimed, "What the hell?!"

A second later, a cloud of black specks came down around her, and the woman quickly met the same fate. She twisted, falling onto the ground with her pupils dilating, breathing deeply.

Against her better judgment, Dinah walked up to the fallen men. Taking a closer look, Dinah gaped, as she saw one of the most bizarre things she'd ever seen. It was a swarm of flies carrying a cluster of twitching flies, which were tied around what appeared to be a spider string.

The cluster of new insects quickly rearranged themselves.

 **INCOMING - MOVE UP ALLEY**

She didn't need to be told twice, and began to run back the way she came. The sound of footsteps made her turn, and she yelped as she saw a lizard-man in a trench coat hopping over the fence thirty feet behind her. The lizard man looked around, and spotted her. His gaze swept over the men who had fallen on the ground, before running at her direction with a look that could murder.

"What the fuck did you do to them?" the lizard man snarled.

Dinah ran faster, turning her head around. The lizard man gave chase, and nearly closed the distance in a second.

Then, he tripped, falling into a somersault and landing on the ground with an alarmed look on his face.

A hand suddenly reached out from inside of her house holding a can of some sort. The hand pressed down on a nozzle, and the lizard man screamed in pain as a cloud shot into him from behind. Turning while blinking his eyes, the lizard man clawed at his eyes, turning around even to face the new threat. The hand pulled back into the Alcott residence, and a vaguely humanoid figure hopped out. The figure had his or her head down, and their figure was covered up by an ill fitting jacket and sweat pants.

"Gregor, I need backup!" The lizard-man shouted into his earpiece. "I think there's an independent in the area, and Faultline's down."

In a lightning fast movement, the lizard man sprang off his powerful legs, and jumped towards the newcomer.

Move! Dinah thought to herself, her aching in a stinging pain as she accidentally inhaled some of the residue from the dispersing cloud.

The lizard man threw his hand out in an overhand swing, striking at the center of the newcomer's face.

Then, the figure exploded into a swarm of black, gray, and brown.

The lizard man screamed as his entire head was covered, losing his balance as a virtual wall of insects burst from the clothes and slammed down on him. Dinah's skin crawled at the nightmarish sight, even as more and more insects swarmed out from all directions to bury the lizard man. The lizard man struggled, flailing his hands around and trying to break free of the dogpile that was quickly forming on him. The swarming insects fell around him in clumps, but there were simply too many of them to shake off.

Dinah gaped, feeling her skin crawl as hundreds of thousands if not millions of insects piled onto the lizard in the trench coat, burying him alive. The insects continued to roll off as he struggled, before he finally went still under a mountain of black, brown, green, yellow, and a whole assorted spectrum of earth colors. The insect pile shifted, and parted into a hole over the lizard man's nostrils. He gasped and coughed, once again trying to dig his way out of the pile.

"Stay down, Newter" a girl's voice rang from inside of her home. "I'm letting you off easy. Just wait until the Protectorate arrives or I swear I'll have them bite this time. And if you're wondering, Gregor is also down in that alley on the other end."

A second later, the owner of the voice hopped out of the window. She was wearing an oversized hoodie and sweat pants, and her face was covered by what looked like a criss-crossed layer of spider webbing. The look reminded Dinah of an urban ninja.

"W-who are you?" Dinah stammered. She was still on guard and ready to bolt at a moment's notice.

The mysterious figure scratched her head thoughtfully, and paused, deliberating on the question for a moment.

 _Chances she wants to hurt me or bears me any ill will._

Her head throbbed with pain, but Dinah felt couldn't help but feel relieved at the answer her power returned.

Zero percent.

A weight she didn't even know was there finally lifted off of Dinah's shoulders.

"Well, that's just a little bit complicated" the girl (woman?) in the hoodie answered.

Nevertheless, her savior smiled warmly through her silken mask.

"I guess... you can call me Weaver."

-ooo-

 **Coil**

Coil shouted in anger, sweeping the contents of his desk off the table as the separate communication lines with Faultline and Brooks went dead in yet another timeline. Next to him, the PRT scanner he kept in his office began to crackle, reporting a cape-related disturbance on Cedar Avenue where the Alcotts resided.

Coil closed the final timeline, one where he had sent half his available mercenaries out to assist Faultline. Despite four waves of increasing escalation over the course of half an hour, his hired hands had failed to capture Dinah Alcott each and every time.

It wouldn't have been nearly as vexing for Coil if he hadn't been left with a complete and utter gap in intelligence between each attempt. Coil didn't even know who or what had foiled the kidnapping, as none of his hired hands had carried recording equipment on the mission, and what little he could scrounge up came from deploying three mercenaries specifically with recording equipment.

The only hint he had managed to obtain was from Newter and Minor in the final two iterations. In the one he kept, Newter had requested backup, citing the presence of an independent cape. In the one where he had deployed his reserve mercenaries, Minor had caught a brief flash of black specks on his helmet cam before promptly collapsing on the ground.

Coil was a firm believer that one could never be too paranoid. He had kept his machinations as carefully laden and hidden as possible, and the fact that his team had been foiled despite multiple intentional delays had disturbing implications. The only one who could even begin to suspect what he was planning with Dinah was Tattletale. Even then he had taken care to hide the existence of Dinah Alcott's power from her.

Faultline was resourceful, and a masterful tactician above all else. The fact that she had been taken out three times before she could react meant that Coil was potentially dealing with a powerful Stranger, or a cape that had meticulously planned a counter-operation. Either was something that Coil had to take additional time to plan and create contingencies for. He would adapt, but the chessboard had been laid out cleanly for him until this point. Now Coil was walking into unknown territory with the existence of this vigilante.

Composing himself, Coil split the timelines. In one of them, he pushed an all-too familiar button on his phone.

"Mr. Pitter? My office, now."

With the loss of Dinah Alcott, his plans had been grossly derailed and delayed. As Pitters entered the room, he promptly shot him in the kneecaps, before emptying the magazine into his femoral artery and ulnar nerve. He collapsed the timeline, and repeated the process four more times.

Coil huffed, relishing in the rush and the dissipation of his frustrations. Now that he had taken a moment to vent, it was time to focus on planning.

* * *

 **A/N:** No, it's not a plot hole or inconsistency. GJ on picking up on it if you do though.

As usual, please read and review.


	9. Session 3

**Disclaimer** **:** I don't own Worm or any of its characters, Worm is the property of Wildbow aka John McCrae. The OCs belong to my tabletop gaming group.

* * *

 **Session 3 - Ian Mueller**

 **Written by Wanton Construct, edited by Verlotorium**

I still felt a bit guilty about not telling Nick the truth about what we were up against, but that was something I could worry about later.

The bar certainly looked the part - it was a corner building roughly 3 stories high, cellar doors on either side and at least to me it looked as if they tried to make the place look as if it was at least as old as its neighbors. A truck was parked on the near side, and I could see two guys unloading crates of shit from them. From the brief initial glance I got of the inside of the place, everything that could have plausibly been made out of oak or maple was.

I say a brief initial glance, because as soon as we got within about a dozen yards of the truck, the older looking of the two guys looked towards us. Probably the owner. He dropped his crate and immediately started shouting.

"OI! ONE OF YOU FUCKS NAMED CLARK?"

Wasn't expecting that. In hindsight I probably should've. That thought probably also makes me an asshole, but right now I was too disoriented to care.

Clark looked between the guy who was shouting and us for a few moments before pointing at himself halfheartedly.

"ITS FUCKING COLD OUT HERE. GRAB A CASE OR TWO AND HEAD DOWN WHERE IT'S TOASTY."

Not about to argue with that.

-ooo-

About 40 minutes later we finished unloading the small truck. Mostly Bushmills and Jameson, along with some of the super cheap shit.

The guy who'd I'd been assuming was the owner based on general behaviour brushed off his pants. He wasn't a huge guy; if I had to guess probably around 5'8", 160 pounds, probably pushing 60. He had dark hair that was starting to go gray, sported a flat cap, and was pretty much the definition of a 'wiry' build. You don't carry 40 liters of liquor at a time up and down two flights of stairs if you didn't have a decent degree of strength in you.

Combine that with the alcoholic's button nose and a thick Boston accent laid over a helping of Irish, and he was pretty much a walking stereotype.

"Right. Putting faces to names. You three lads are Clark, Ian, and Nick right? Name's Kevin McDonagh, owner. Call me 'Mr. McDonagh' if you want to piss me off as quickly as possible; otherwise 'Kevin' is fine." He shook hands with each of us, and calling his grip 'vicelike' was putting it mildly.

"So why'd you name it 'O'Houlihan's' instead of 'McDonagh's' or something?" Clark asked.

"It was my Uncle's on my mother's side. Started it when I was a kid out in St. Paul, and I took over once he died. Moved here about two decades ago, never wanted or felt the need to change the name. It's got a better ring to it anyway. Now that that's taken care of, we should see which room upstairs is the least dusty."

We hopped in the service elevator which seemed to be operating in decent enough condition, if just a tiny bit slower than I would've personally liked. The three of us deliberated for a minute, before picking the room closest to the fire escape. A moment later, we set about lugging a couple of couches with fold out beds into it, and Kevin took the opportunity to review and explain why Nowicki brought him up in the first place. The Nowicki and McDonagh families had been friends back in St. Paul too, and they'd transplanted themselves within a few years of each other. Extended family included. Didn't clarify why beyond 'we all felt like it and Minnesota was too damned cold.'

That bothered the shit out of me because it sounded like a flimsy reason. Was I forgetting something important canon mentioned about the 90s? For every significant alteration canon explored, there were like 5 more that weren't, and any of those could fuck up my whole week. Even if I wrote off that whole train of thought, there are still perfectly mundane explanations to worry about. Were these guys actually running a ponzi scheme and they bounced with the loot? Do they owe debts to a mob?

At this point I'm not just looking the gift horse in the mouth so much as inspecting its shit with a microscope. Even though this line of thought ceased being productive after about three minutes, I couldn't shake myself out of it for another dozen or so; I couldn't help but feel that there were already a bunch of things I'd already missed that I should've paid attention to, and that we were going to pay for it in blood and-

"IAN"

Why was Clark shouting at me?

"We've been trying to break you out of your trance for an entire freaking minute. You really need to stop pacing and muttering to yourself like you're possessed. We finished like ten minutes ago and we've been waiting on you to finish your conversation with Satan so that we can head back downstairs."

Fuuuuuck me.

-ooo-

"Alright. How's this employment/living situation going to go for us? Are we gonna be waiters or what?" Clark asked.

Kevin grunted, taking a swig out of the bottle he had on hand before addressing us.

"Well, it's probably going to change day-to-day, especially with New Year's coming up, so you're going to need to wear a few different hats. Fair bit of just moving shit; I've got a literal fucking truckload of paperwork that has to get moved for example, but there's some gaps in the waiter, busboy, and bartending schedules that you can fill too."

"Wait, bartending? Isn't that some manner of hella illegal for us to be doing?" Clark asked.

"Nobody really gives much of a shit these days. Used to in the early 90s, but more and more capes means more fucking shit gets broken, which means nobody's got the time or money to check things like 'all the bartenders are of age.'"

Jesus fucking christ, it's like he's _trying_ to set off as many red flags as he can.

The next couple of hours or so is spent hammering out details. We can pretty much order a meal from the kitchen whenever, and Kevin'll throw a couple hundred bucks at us tomorrow morning for bathroom supplies and whatever we can find at a thrift store in the way of clothes, along with a few company shirts because _yay_ half-assed uniforms. Again, I can't look at that offer without feeling that it's real shady. If we were close friends or friends of family, sure, but we're not. Nowicki _is_ but we're total fucking strangers to him too.

I mean, I can make a few assumptions for some back of the envelope math and we're probably still cheaper than regular employees by a factor of around 4, give or take, but at least to me there's no reason to take that kind of massive fucking legal risk, let alone the risk of inviting actual strangers to live above your workplace. It wasn't like he just completely failed to consider these risks either. Every time we brought up another complication he just flat out dismissed it as a non-issue. I'm not sure which is worse.

We finished talking in the back office where he gave us the key to the room. By this time it was about half past two in the morning, and last call was half an hour ago. Pretty much nobody left in the building except us and the poor fucker closing up shop. The poor fucker in question happened to be a girl named Siobhan, and she looked barely any older than we were. Again, not a point in Kevin's favor, but I'm starting to get a little too tired to care.

"These the guys who got brainfucked?" she asked with a smile.

"Accurate, blunt, and concise. 3 for 3," I said. Except that it wasn't. At all. Even remotely. But these guys don't need to know that.

Siobhan just giggled in response. "Kev! You made it sound like they were gonna be fuckin' retards or something. You had me worried!"

Kevin looked appalled. "No I fuckin didn- BILL. Bill told you that didn't he? I owe him a shiner."

Siobhan laughed a little harder. "No no, not for that at least. But Jen owes me ten bucks. She bet you'd blame Rico first."

"One of these days I will stop falling for that," Kevin muttered.

"Probably the week after hell freezes over. What're you feeling for the closer?"

Kevin scanned the shelves for a few moments. "You lads have any preferences?"

Did he just?

"I'm eyeing the SoCo over there," Nick answered before I could even finish registering the question. "Clark, you don't have too much of a preference do you?"

"My experience is limited to Kosher wines, jungle juice, and tequila, and fuck tequila, it's the worst. So as long as it's not that I'm happy."

"Can't go wrong with Jim Beam," I offered, although my eyes did wander towards the top shelf.

Siobhan followed my gaze. "Kev, the Tyrconnell 15 is paid for."

"Really now? Well that's as good an excuse as any. Get your pretty little arse up there and bring it down."

-ooo-

He gave us the bottle. Sure, it was just shy of half empty, but he _gave us the bottle_. Ignoring the flippant disregard for age restrictions for a minute, that shit is _expensive_.

Not like I was about to say no, either. Waking up in the Wormverse against your will is a perfectly valid and acceptable excuse to drink, and fuck anyone who says otherwise.

"Looks like Clark's out for the night," Nick said. We'd gotten the foldout beds set up earlier so, Clark just kinda flopped immediately. How he managed to sleep, I'm not quite sure. Even though we were both dead tired, Nick and I were wide awake and passing the bottle back and forth, and I was the somewhat narcoleptic one.

"So what'd you think of him?" Nick asked after about a minute of silence. It was a good question.

"Honestly, not sure," I began. "He gave us the bottle. No idea if that's a good thing or a bad thing."

"I'd call it a win," he said, taking the bottle back from me. "But I think I see your point?"

"Pretty much fucking everything that he's done so far is like that though," I said. "I mean, look at what just happened. On the one hand, cool, he's letting us lick our wounds here. We've got food and shelter and we got IDs in the works, and we pay him in odd jobs. But think about what that looks like to somebody with no context; some dude just employed a bunch of undocumented immigrant _kids_ , because we're minors again remember? Yeah, also, _he ain't fuckin' payin' them_. I don't know about you, but if somebody looked at that situation and said, 'hmmm that sounds really fucking illegal in several ways' I would have a hard time faulting them for it."

Nick laughed as I finished and started taking my drink. "Now we're the ones stealing jobs in our own country."

"Not even just that, we fucking pointed it out to him, each time, and it's like he doesn't even fucking care. Like he's convinced it won't be a problem."

"Yeah, that did seem a little weird. But isn't that a good thing in our case provided nobody checks?"

Nick refused the bottle as I went to give it back to him, so I took another drink before continuing. "What else doesn't he give a shit about? Did he skimp on the fire codes? Circuit breakers? Boiler have a problem that everyone's ignoring? I checked the faucet before, so I know the water's pretty clean but still, you get where I'm going with this?"

Nick scratched his head a bit. "Fair point, but we cross that bridge when we get there."

"The fuck do you mean 'when' we get there? Motherfucker we've been there since we fucking woke up. We've got nothing to our names, and our fucking names are invalid anyway. Someone looks at us funny and decides to ask the wrong question at the wrong time while the wrong people are in earshot? Could be bad dude."

"Ian, that's not what I meant and you know it. What's the chance of that happening?"

I looked at what was left in the bottle. Looked to be about an eighth left. "I'm glad you asked that question." I drained the rest of the bottle before continuing. "Let's say the chance of something bad happening to either you, me, or Clark is around 1 in 100 for any given day, and each day is it's own independent trial, assuming we don't do anything to draw attention to ourselves. Geometric distribution has mean one over p, so that means we can expect shit to hit the fan in about 100 days, or a little more than 3 months. That's our window to get the legal identity shit sorted out."

"You're being paranoid. Don't you think that's way too goddamn high on the chances there? I mean, the chance of getting in a car accident are like one in fifty grand or something, and the chances of being the victim of a violent crime at any point in your _life_ are like 1 in 50, but spread that over however many days are in 40 years, and they drop don't they?"

"First of all, those chances were true back in the real world, but this is the wormverse, so inflate that number by about two and a half or three orders of magnitude. Second, I said 'something bad' which includes perfectly unsexy things like getting sick. Kinda hard to see a doctor when the doctor ain't got anybody to bill."

"And you're doing a damn good job of speeding that along buddy. Right now as you're talking to me, your _friend who is also in this shit with you_ I might add, you look like you're three seconds away from having a fucking aneurysm. Chill."

My train of thought got violently derailed upon hearing that. I opened my mouth for a second, then shut it. I could hear my blood in my ears, and I could feel the tension in my forearms from how tightly I had balled up my fists. Nick had a point.

In and out. In and out.

"Sorry about that." I said a moment later.

"You did just drink like a third of the whole bottle in one sitting. Out of a liter bottle that's like...at least 7 shots, plus the four we each had before coming up here."

"Wasn't the liquor talking."

"Come on Ian. You can't get tilted this early in the game. How much time do we have?"

"Soft or hard?"

"The hard limit. We never got to the endgame in the campaign but Brad was hyping it up a bit."

Zion glassing everything across an arbitrarily large number of earths is something that is a bit hype-worthy, yes.

"Two and a half years give or take a month, assuming we don't impact the chain of events in any noticeable way."

"Alright, that sounds like something we might be able to work with. What happens then?"

Oh, nothing big, just the **fucking apocalypse**. Caused by what was functionally a malevolent physical god whose original plans got the wrench treatment. And those original plans included destroying a ton of earths anyway, and Jack Slash managed to talk him into accepting the sunk cost fallacy, and following through on the end phase of the plan.

I opened my mouth, then shut it again. I didn't want to tell Nick. I didn't want him to freak out and start panicking. Then I remembered my stay in the hospital about 3 years ago, which was caused by, lo and behold, _exactly the same fucking thing_.

I did an impression of a fish out of water for the next minute, searching for a way to start the sentence.

"It's bad then. Alright. I'm not gonna make you say it right now, but let us know within the week."

Goddammit Ian. If I'm this much of a fucking pussy we're dead in the water.

"So smaller things," Nick began. "You know the first session of XCOM: Worm edition?"

"The OC Endbringer? Babylon? Yeah, what about it?"

"Wait, that was OC? I thought he was one of the ones that got woken up later in canon. Least that's what Clark said. Anyway, there was a spot at which I was doing some scouting and Brad had that woman in the fedora show up, and she also showed up in the first session for like half a second. Who is she?"

"Her? Cont-" I cut myself off and held up a finger. How functionally omnipresent was Cauldron's surveillance supposed to be? Didn't it get actively filtered out from PHO posts or something? Shit, that might have just been fanon. Could Doormaker and Clairvoyant hear us?

"OK, while I try to figure out if it's safe to say her name, she's with the...let's call them Case-53 people, not to be confused with Case-53s." I stopped and looked around me for a few moments, half expecting a portal to blink into existence anyway.

"Right. Cauldron." I cringed hard, and half jumped out of my seat try to shut him up.

"Don't fucking say that out loud they might hear you!" I said in a harsh whisper.

"Ian you sound like the 'Aliens' guy right now. You expect me to believe Cauldron operates like Candyman where you say the fedora-lady's name in a bathroom mirror three times and she just shows up and shoots you in the nuts? Tell me her name; I'mma do it right now just to prove you wrong. Even if she's listening she's probably got plenty of better things to do."

"Y'know what, fuck it. Fine. For science. Her name's Contessa."

"Sweet." Nick got and up and ran into the bathroom, and shut the door. I heard his muffled shouting

"1-2-3-4 Contessa is a filthy whore, 5-6-7-8 on camera she will masturbate, ein-zwei-drei-fier holy shit she's actually here! Ian, help!"

Wait what.

I jumped out of the chair I was sitting in and started running towards the door. Unfortunately the chair was on my shoelace, and the alcohol had snuck up on me, so I faceplanted on the floor exactly two steps later.

I heard the door open as well as Nick barely able to keep his laughter at 'giggles' rather than a full blown belly laugh. "Jesus Ian, you gonna believe 'gullible' isn't in the dictionary too? You can't fall for something like that."

Fuck him and his frat boy dickery, but he had a point. I held up a middle finger as I peeled myself off the floor.

"Alright, I don't know about you but I'm tired. Tomorrow we should find some shit and start making a list of things that will make our lives easier."

I nodded. Bed sounded like a really good idea right now.

-ooo-

I dreamt about a recurring nightmare.

Again, I was back home 3 years ago being driven to the hospital. My entire gut felt like it was coated in lava, and the pressure around the lower right side was especially bad. A couple of nurses started taking care of me as soon as the info was filled out.

Again, they gave me some morphine and some weird milkshake to drink so they could take a CAT scan and verify their suspicions. Again, I vomited it back up 20 minutes later.

The scan was complete and they let me sleep for a bit before wheeling me to a surgery room. Again, they told me that my appendix had ruptured 4 days ago, and it had gone necrotic, and was doing damage to my large and small intestines. Again they told me they needed to scrub that shit down.

Again they told me that because I let it go too long, there was a solid chance I was going to die on the table. Again, I was handed a "do not resuscitate" option.

Again, I woke up in the middle of the surgery in muted yet horrible pain, thinking about how fucking stupid I was. About how I would die before I was given the chance to really live and it was completely my fault.

Again, I looked up, except this time, the person doing the surgery was a little blond girl with a manic grin.

-ooo-

I jolted awake - the right side of my torso was locking up in a series of cramps. I grabbed the back of the couch and twisted myself in the opposite direction, which worked after a few moments. Cramp abated, I blinked the sleep from my eyes. I felt strangely rested all things considered, and I knew that if I went back to sleep, I would feel like absolute dogshit when I got up the second time. As it stood right now the hangover was starting to settle in, so I got up to get drink a bunch of water and try to head off the worst of it.

The clock read 9:13, but I had no idea how accurate that was, and Nick and Clark were both still sleeping. I went to wash my face. I took a closer look at my face in the mirror, looking for inconsistencies. Nick and Clark had their facial structures mostly intact, but still noticeably changed, albeit for different reasons. Mine as far as I could tell was unchanged, so I started looking for other differences on my person.

I found the appendectomy scars were missing. Moreover, I found the gains I had lost due to various injuries in the gym had decided to all come back to me at the same time. In addition to that, I gained a couple of inches as well, going from pretty tall at 6'2" to really tall at 6'4". All in all, I was built like a second string collegiate wide receiver.

Part of me was angry because I didn't earn it; it felt like an veiled middle finger from the multiverse because I was too much of a sack of shit otherwise. Not the most rational line of thought ever, but I've been a constant shitty mood since Fenway. A bigger part of me told the other to shut its fucking mouth and count the blessings as they come; physical strength and durability was probably going to be much more important here than back home.

I kicked Clark and Nick awake about an hour later when Kevin showed up with more shit to move. Mostly just reams of paperwork, but we did have to move an honest to god Steinway into the main room. It was merely an upright piano, but those still fetch upwards of 20 grand on the high end. I asked about it, and it turns out Kevin lost a 7 footer in the previous location, so he got this one and the 50% of the difference in cash from the insurance company. Pretty solid outcome all things considered.

When we were done, it was about 3 in afternoon, and we were going to see what we could get with some pocket money and 5 hours. We managed to get the basics for clothing and shower supplies, and I found a shitty pair of steel toe boots my size, while Clark found a second hand guitar that was actually in decent condition and going for pennies. Bit of an impulse buy, but fuck it, sometimes that's what you need. Clark also bribed the owner into letting him use the computer behind the counter to look something up real quick before Nick or I could stop him. Still a net positive on the day.

On the way back Nick spotted a section of pipe lying around in one of the alleys. About two feet long, good 8 or 9 pounds. After a glance between us, the pipe came back with us too; better to have and not need than need and not have after all. I knew it wouldn't suffice for too many scenarios, but it should for a few. Besides, trying to get a quality blade or firearm legally given our situation was not going to be worth the effort at all, nor did we have the time. And getting one illegally generally ends up costing something more than just money. Too steep for my blood.

-ooo-

Kevin threw Nick onto the waitstaff, put Clark on busboy duty, and threw me behind the bar at around 9:00. It was a weekday night, so there wasn't too large a crowd; we were thrown into the deep end, but the deep end is actually 6' 0" so you can kinda stand on your toes and be able to breathe. Siobhan was supervising me, at first restricting me from touching any liquor at all. I forgot that you needed a license to do this job, so what I was doing was actually blatantly illegal if someone happened to check. On top of that, the only bar experience I've had was on the other side of one. It's real easy to over serve people if you don't know what you're doing, and lawsuits over that shit can and do happen.

About a quarter past eleven, there was a poignant lull in activity, and I took the opportunity to wipe the bar down. About 5 minutes later the next couple of customers sat down.

The first thing that jumped out at me is that the girl that sat down. Light blonde hair, blue eyes, and a shapely athletic body, she was the single most attractive girl I had seen in the past 36 hours, and that is not an exaggeration. Then again, considering how I got here, and by extension the small sample of people I've seen, that's really not saying too much.

I handed them some menus. "What can I get for you?" I asked.

The guy sitting next to her was on the bigger side of the general population. I was a tall person, and he was only three or so inches shorter than me, and a fair bit stockier. He struck me as the type to have probably played football in high school.

"Right, give me the jalapeno swiss pork sliders, and an Irish car bomb."

"I like your style," I said, before turning back to his friend. A small part of me hoped they weren't dating for whatever reason. Not like my chances were significant in the first place, but 0.001 is still better than 0.00001. "And what can I get for you miss?"

She didn't look up for a few seconds.

"Mars," her friend called, tapping her on the shoulder to get her attention. 'Mars?' That almost sounds like a fucking hippie name.

"Whuh, are we waiting on me? Oh...gimme the french onion soup, and a mai tai."

"Got it. You want to open a tab?"

"Sure. Here's a card," I took it and rang up the order, while Siobhan made the drinks. I looked at the card for her name. 'Marissa Newland,' eh? I suppose that 'Mars' works then. The name sounded familiar, though. I knew I'd seen that name before and I was trying to remember where it was.

No one joined them at the bar for a little while longer. The big dude was called Luke, and the three of us were making a bit of small talk while they waited on food.

"You know, you got that talent show playing on the TV over there. I always notice that like half the dudes are bartenders in their day jobs. You ever think of doing something like that?"

"Nearly went to school for it," I replied. Which was technically true. I did nearly go to school for a degree in music composition, just not in _this_ timeline. And wasn't that a joy to think about.

"Oh yeah? Sing something then."

Huh. Well, a little Johnny Cash never hurt anyone.

 _"~Go tell that long tongue liar, Go tell that midnight rider, Tell the rambler the gambler the back-biter, Tell 'em God's gonna cut 'em down, Tell 'em God's gonna cut 'em down.~"_

"So you weren't lying," Luke said with a chuckle, while Marissa cracked a smile.

"What about you guys? What do you do?"

"We're traveling performers. Luke juggles and I dance. We make enough just to get by and see the country, and all that" Marissa supplied. "We actually have a gig in the city right now, and the client is...a bit of a slave driver, to say the least."

Nick came out with the food they ordered a few moments later, and I found an excuse to go to the bathroom.

Luke and Marissa seemed like pret- wait a minute.

Wait just a fucking minute.

I hadn't heard those names before; I've _read_ about them. Marissa Newland. Hot blonde with blue eyes. Dances. Luke. Built like a football player.

Fuck. Shit. Alright, calm down Ian. Opportunity to do something is here and the clock's ticking. What do I know that they do?

They go off to work for Coil somewhere between 4 and 5 months from now. Coil contains Noelle. He claimed to have his best men working on fixing her. I don't know if he could have or would have cured that situation had he not had acute lead poisoning in the brain at point blank range, but fuck the guy either way.

There was also that theory that Noelle being in the Bay contributed to attracting Leviathan. If talking to them had a possibility of heading that off, no matter how small, it was absolutely worth doing.

How do I tell them without being vaporized via mini fusion reaction or ending up smeared across a wall, though? How're they going to react to some random asshole telling them a vague piece of advice on one of their closest guarded secrets?

Why am I even asking that question? It's not a skill I've put any effort into; I have a hard fucking time being honest with myself about how I'd react to something like that, and I'm trying to predict someone else's without practice? If that ain't the height of hubris I don't know what is.

Back to the more pressing matter, what do I tell them exactly? Panacea obviously won't work, but she's not the end-all. I've seen a couple of theories as to how Noelle's condition could be potentially reversed, but no confidence that any of them would actually work either. There's no guarantee it's even possible. Probably better that I say nothing than resort to an ass-pull.

I washed my face twice and headed back. My shift was almost over.

They'd just finished eating too and asked me for the check. Fuck me. Alright, short and sweet message on the back of the receipt. It'll have to do because that's all I have time for.

 _I mean no harm. Do not work for Coil. He won't help Noelle. Don't tell Krouse. Will make bad call._

A little loaded but fuck it, good enough. I didn't dare stick around for the reaction. Nick and Clark had already headed on up a few minutes ago. I went through the kitchen to the storage room and back to the cargo elevator, picking up a bottle of well whiskey on the way. Kevin had flat out told us he'd be shocked if we could manage to drink enough to noticeably affect profits.

Right now I was a happier man for it; I just made a snap decision and gambled with my life. I could use a little Dutch courage before I find out if the dice came up in my favor.

-ooo-

I sat on the edge of the couch staring out the window at the snow coming down, waiting to feel sleepy and drinking to try and help that along. Not the best habit to immediately pick up, but whatever.

I always liked watching snow fall - it put my mind at ease. If you relaxed your eyes, sometimes you could even see patterns and shapes. I looked up at the sky, illuminated with light pollution, and something caught my eye. I squinted, and for a bit, I thought I saw something akin to a single blue butterfly, flapping it's wings.

* * *

A/N: Aaaand here we go. Both the Taylor and SI lines are out of their respective preludes and we can get to the meaty stuff. As usual, please read and review.


	10. Session 4

**Disclaimer:** **I don't own Worm or any of its characters. Worm is the property of Wildbow aka John McCrae. However, my gaming group does own the original characters.**

* * *

 **Session 4: Clark Horowitz**

 **Written by WantonConstruct**

 **January 1st, 2011**

 _"~...Six strippers stripping, FIIIIIVE KEYS OF BLOOOOW, four grand in cash, three fat blunts, two college girls, and some really awesome heaaaaad!~"_

It's times like this that I wish I could shitpost in real life. Ian and Nick were absolutely piss drunk as they climbed up the stairs behind me, repeating the most horribly illegal version of that song I'd even heard. Wasn't even theirs either; some dude started singing it at like 1:30 and everybody else just started joining in afterwards.

Thankfully we were closed tomorrow and off the next day, so that was something. Can't wait for the hangover tomorrow to kill me all the way to fucking death. I was having a bit of difficulty walking a straight line as is, and I had no idea how those two guys were still on their feet, or still singing on pitch.

After the fourth attempt to get the door open, we made our way inside and flopped onto our respective couch beds. I thought I would feel a bit better once I was horizontal but the room insisted on spinning just to spite me. Time to get some advice from people who've done this before.

"Nick? How do I make the room stop spinning?"

Nick just gave a bit of a grunt at first. "Mmmm? Rooms do that. They hate you. And me."

That was honestly about as helpful as expected.

"Put your _*hic*_ , sorry, put one foot on the floor. Always worked for me."

 _That_ piece of advice seemed to work like a charm. Or black magic. One of the two. Whatever, I was still trying to figure out what curves we are five years ahead of right now. What was I doing in 2011 anyway? I hadn't joined Tumblr yet, and the things that robbed hours of my life everyday were restricted to dramatic blog readings on YouTube and Minecraft. Fuck, I don't even think I was out as **Ace** yet. As far as internet history is concerned, 5 years was an eternity.

Might as well get some story time going to distract me from the building nausea. "What were you guys doing back in 2011 anyway?"

"Shit man, I'm not *hic* entirely sure. I think that was….fuck...still junior or senior year of _*hic*_ high school but I can't math right now. Pretty sure I was tryna get diamond in SCII and screwing around with girls or something," Nick drawled.

"I was putting together auditions for music schools right around now." That was Ian. "Trying to hit the mid January deadlines and shit."

"Why did you end up going into software engineering anyway? Didn't you get in for music too? Your parents make you do it?"

Ian laughed. "That was my decision, not my parents'. My dad still gives me shit over it occasionally, but not like I can do anything about it now."

"Wait, why?" I asked. "We're in the Wormverse as people who are so fucking dead they weren't even alive to begin with. Hard to get more blank slate than that. It's a new year, you could make music your new year's resolution or something. Hell we all could, and become like a super postmodern hipster band for shiggles." Ian chuckled but Nick stayed eerily silent. I guess the joke wasn't that funny. Let's try another. "Speaking of new year's resolutions, I have exactly one that I truly care about. And that is to successfully prank call the real Coil, with the dumbest shit I can think of, just to piss him off. Because Coil is an asshole."

"Please don't," Nick growled. "I'm not suicidal just yet. 'Sides, how would you even get his number?"

"Eh, details," I said with a wave of the hand for effect. I already had a list of phone numbers corresponding to 'Thomas Calvert's in Brockton Bay from when we went to the thrift store, or at least the three that were publicly listed and searchable in the 5 minutes I spent. With any luck one of those is him. If not I can always find some time to look a little more.

If we talked about anything else past that point, I don't remember it.

-ooo-

The scraping sound of metal on concrete is already pretty hard to deal with at the best of times, let alone while dealing with a hangover. Well, more like a hangover lite; I didn't actually feel that horribly awful, but Nick was just about finished making good friends with the toilet.

Also someone had been kind enough to put on some coffee. When and/or where did we get a coffee pot anyway?

Nick had the right idea; coffee first, questions later.

I jumped a little once Ian walked back in the room, face completely red, as he'd been the source of the scraping sounds from outside. "How bad is it outside?" I asked.

"Could be worse. Wasn't too much snow to clear."

"How the hell are you okay?" Nick groaned. "You drank more than me, and I just got moving like half an hour ago."

Ian laughed. "When the German gives out, the Irish kicks in, and if needed my Cuban _mestizo_ side lends a hand. So we got the day off and some pocket change from the last couple of days. Any ideas?"

I suggested that we try and hit up a library for some computer use, just to try and get a grounding on current events and such. Nick was pretty adamant about food, and after that trying to get some more clothes.

A little over a half hour later, I found out that my shitposting itch would remain unscratched until we either got our own computer or those temp visas came in. On the one hand, I get needing some type of ID, I really do. The library is trying to cover its own ass if we happen to be dirty hackers using their facilities for selling government secrets or child porn or whatever.

On the other I'm still really pissed off about it. It was like the only part of the day I was seriously looking forward to.

Lunch was alright, settled for sandwiches out of a deli, nothing fancy. Ian did seem really skittish though about this one guy in the line. Greasy hair, very early 20s, looked southern European of some type, with a bit of a crook to his nose. No idea what that was about though; I'll ask him about it later.

What I didn't expect to be doing today is to find an open Sam Ash, but I'm not complaining. If you ever want to see a faithful recreation of the kid-in-a-candy-store face, put an Ibanez RGA 7 stringer in Nick's hands. I also didn't expect to kill pretty much the rest of the day there, between trying out all the different drum sets and trying to dictate the bass lines from some of the _Starbound_ tracks to Ian. All things considered, it was a pretty good day.

-ooo-

 **January 5th, 2011**

This week was the first full week that we'd be working, and the first chance to settle into a routine. Moving a bunch of shit in and out of the basement took up the morning from about 11 onwards. Most of it was just food and liquor, occasionally some computer equipment that was heavy as fuck. Not sure what it was being used for because we weren't replacing any of the card readers and scheduling machines behind the bar anyway.

I'd start busing tables at around 3 along with Rico and Paulie, while Ian and Nick would alternate behind the bar, and that would be take up the rest of the day, until about 11. All things considered I found it boring as all hell, so I spent that time trying to come up with ways to possibly warn people about Ziz. I really couldn't think of anything that would seriously work according to what Ian told me of this world, so it was an exercise in futility, but it passed the time. 3 dollars in quarters and a payphone might be fun, but certainly not for very long.

I swear when I get access to a computer I might give up and make a PHO thread titled " **ZIZ SMELLS** " and have the body be "by the way: Canberra, Aussie-land, watch out for her in late February. She'll make you guys smell too."

On Monday morning, we'd headed down to the precinct to try and see what the deal was with the temp IDs. We were told we'd have them by the end of the week, which was mildly annoying but whatever.

Wednesday was different though, mostly due to the fact that there was live music. Which is apparently a major draw of the original place, and our coworkers mentioned it at any point in time. Or maybe they did and I wasn't paying attention, which was also completely possible.

Towards the end of my shift, I saw that Nick was really pissed off about something. That's normal for Ian, but not for Nick.

"Why the angry face?" I asked. Nick jumped a bit.

"Don't worry about it. Just somebody being a dick is all." I wasn't entirely convinced that was it, but I wasn't going to press the issue. A few minutes later, he turned back to me.

"How do you like the setup there?" he asked, pointing at the little stage corner.

"Uh...Iunno, looks kinda cozy. The girl on the piano up there seems to not have too much of a problem with it." Pretty good rendition of 'Yellow Brick Road' too.

"How'd you feel about playing up there in front of a small crowd here?"

I had to think about that for a moment. "I'm not entirely certain. I mean, I played a bit of percussion in the high school orchestra, but that wasn't the same thing; you're one person in a group of a few dozen people at least. Being up in a small group or by yourself is a different experience, I'd imagine."

"You're right, it is different, but the gap really isn't all that large between the two. How'd you feel about getting up there on Saturday?"

"Wait what? Why would I be up there on Saturday afternoon? What did you do?"

"Well I didn't do anything yet, but I talked to Kevin about it, and he was also pretty on board with the idea if we could find a way to source some instruments from a pawn shop or something." Nick shrugged his shoulders a tad. "Ian also didn't have any complaints."

"Is that because you didn't ask him yet?"

"Pleading the 5th," Nick said with a smile.

A few hours later, we went upstairs to ask Ian what he thought about the idea, but he was already out cold on the couch bed. The third empty bottle in 6 days was _probably_ not a good sign. Nick kicked him in the side.

"Jesus fucking…ow...the fuck was that for?" Ian grumbled. "It's still nighttime. Where's the fire?"

"No fire, but one burning question. How'd you feel about being one of the acts on Saturday?"

Ian looked at Nick, and then at me. "You're fine with the idea?" he asked.

"Do we honestly have anything better to do?" Seriously. I was bored to goddamn tears without a computer, truth be told. My hobbies up until universe transplant all required a computer with an internet connection, and largely revolved around writing mods and sprites for games that haven't come out yet. It doesn't matter what game you're playing; if you can have a gun that shoots ramen and fishcakes at people it will always be funny.

And because Leviathan sucks, some of them never will. I'm really good at making myself sad.

-and then Ian turned back to Nick with a sigh. "With what instruments?"

"I wormed an extra $200 out of Kevin for whatever we can get at a pawn shop." Ian rubbed his eyes for a bit, seeming like he was thinking it over.

"Fine. When do you want to get them?"

"Tomorrow; wake up bright and early and get there as soon as possible. They probably open around 9 anyway. You can pass out now."

Ian instead sat up further. "No, fuck you, you woke me up. Besides, did you give any thought to what we're gonna actually play? Put any thought into it at all?"

I knew the only correct answer to this one. " _Undertale_. We're covering _Undertale_. It'll be so hipster that it hasn't even been written yet." I couldn't even keep a straight face while saying it.

Nick slapped me in the back of the head. I guess I deserved that one but I don't care it was completely worth.

"Truth be told," I followed up, "I have absolutely no idea what we're going. I just kind of agreed because I figured I would end up improvising anyway." I turned to Nick next. "Did you actually have an idea or were you completely winging this?"

"Woah, woah, hear me out," Nick said, holding up his hands in defense. "Just stick to simple covers of reasonable moneymakers. We'll figure it out tomorrow. I know you know a bunch of songs, and I know you're good enough to piece together what you don't know. And you've seen that Clark is good enough to follow along. Remember last February?"

Ian smiled a bit. "Fine. I guess we'll write up a set list tomorrow then?"

Sounded like a plan.

-ooo-

The next morning proved to me that even in this universe where I didn't have a computer to keep my attention until 4 A.M, I was still decidedly not a morning person.

I was also confused as to how we ended up in the Sam Ash from Saturday instead of the pawn shop like Nick suggested. He gave me a conspiratory wink that did not help my nerves in the slightest while he told us to go grab the instruments we liked.

Ian and I didn't budge. "Dude. We have 200 bucks. The fuck can we get with that?" I asked while Ian just stared at him.

Nick sighed before pulling a credit card basically out of his ass.

 _"Nick..."_ Ian growled. He looked like he was about a half second away from throttling the guy.

"Please explain before Ian murders you," I pleaded.

"Alright here's the deal," Nick started. "You know how I was pissed off last night?" he asked me. It rang a bell but I let him continue. "Well, I'm a frat officer. You guys know this. You also no doubt know the shit most frats get about the whole date rape culture thing right?

We nodded.

"Well as much as I fucking hate that very concept, it is a thing that happens in some frats. It takes a lax upbringing and a generous set of circumstances for someone to think that it's a good idea. A plurality of frats know this and actively try to combat it whenever they see it. None of the fucking social media shit ever reports on this because it doesn't generate clicks, but I can tell you honestly that my frat for certain has a thing where we are good at spotting other guys who fit the frat mold, especially when they try and pull some shit like spiking someone's drink."

"Is that what you were pissed off about yesterday?" I ventured.

"Yep. The scumbag went to the bathroom after spiking his date's drink. Luckily they both got the same wine, so I could swap them. Dude was too fucked by the time he left to realize I took his card, and he won't be awake to cancel it for another few hours. And if this particular card is anything like its counterpart back home, he's got at least a 5 grand limit on it."

Ian just stared at him while I tried to process what happened.

"Are we profiteering from a prevented date-rape?" I asked in a quiet voice after a few seconds. "Because if so I'm not sure how to feel about that." Is there a way I'm supposed to feel about this? Because if there is I have no shame in admitting to a failure here.

Ian took a deep breath. "Don't fucking do something like this again," he said. "At the absolute minimum, _warn_ us next time. And I mean that as the absolute minimum. Otherwise I swear I'm breaking your jaw." He looked over at me and then back at Nick, much calmer this time. "Let's get this shit over with."

-ooo-

We ended up using the money Nick weaseled out of Kevin as cab fare more than anything else to carry everything back. I wished I waited for a different cab, because listening to the current driver curse a mile a minute in Hebrew made me feel just a little more homesick. Sometimes it's the little things that really kill you.

I was real happy to get out of that cab.

When our shifts ended early at around 8, so began the process of taking a level in Bard. Figuring out which songs we knew, along with those that we could feasibly play with three people.

"So right off the bat, anything by Iron Maiden is out. We need two guitars and a bass to do any of their songs properly, and I don't think any of us have Bruce Dickinson's range," Nick started.

"If we're covering shit, we can just drop the octave if need be, but otherwise agreed. As much as I'd like to do some Guns'n'Roses, we also can't plausibly cheat there," Ian stated. "Early Green Day maybe? 'Basket Case' or 'Longview'?"

"I like that idea; maybe some Nirvana too? _'Smells Like Teenage Spirit'_?"

"Sure," I cut in, "just make sure Ian's drunk for that one because no one is supposed to understand what the hell Kurt Cobain was singing. Not even Kurt Cobain." Authenticity is important dammit.

"Officer I swear to drunk I'm not god. Anyway, back to the topic at hand; how heavy do we want to go? We could probably get away with some Pantera right?"

"Probably not the crowd for it. Later maaaaybe? If you want to do that, Motorhead works better."

By the time we all agreed on something, it was 1:30 in the morning. Being a pen and paper Bard was infinitely easier than being one in real life. At least we weren't writing these from scratch.

[SPOILER="Set List"]

 **Motorhead - Ace of Spades**

 **Green Day - Welcome to Paradise**

 **Nirvana - Smells Like Teenage Spirit**

 **Lit - My Own Worst Enemy**

 **RHCP - Under the Bridge**

[/SPOILER]

The whole of Friday was spent in our rented-but-not-rented room during the selections. Nick for whatever reason volunteered us for this Saturday instead of next, which would have made sense. But maybe, just maybe, we could make it work. We did manage to come up with a list of songs that we all knew after all. After a solid 14 hours of practice, I was starting to believe this wouldn't end up being terrible.

Saturday afternoon rolled up on top of us and I had the butterflies as we got everything set up. Truth be told I wasn't worried at all about the main focus which would be drums. No, my real concern is that I was supposed to be singing. Granted, back home, my voice was real nasally on a good day, and that seemed to have improved somewhat upon being wrenched over here, but it really wasn't something I was comfortable with. So when Murphy decided to fart on my mic and kill it all the way to death, I took that as a blessing in disguise.

All in all, the set went about as well as I could have hoped. Got a **massive** round of applause and everything, and we even had a few hundred bucks thrown in the tip case. Not bad at all. There was this one blonde girl who was staring really intensely at Ian the whole time. Not like _'I'm going to murder you, then rez you then murder you again'_ kind of stare, more of a several disappointed mother vibe if that made any sense. Which it didn't considering she was like 23 years old max. I decided to just drop the thought.

I was moving the drum set back up the stairs when Rico caught up to me.

"Holy shit man, way to fucking go! You never told me you guys were musicians! Were those all original songs? I recognized the Motorhead one but none of the others."

"No, those were all popular covers," I replied. "I mean, we even picked Green Day and RHCP for our set list."

"Who?"


	11. GM Notes - Genesis

**GM Notes 1: Genesis**

 **December 28th, 2010**

 **Written by: WantonConstruction**

Edited by Verlotorium

* * *

 _"-You'll shoot your eye out!"_

Jess took a sip from her coffee mug as the classic scene played out on TV. It was a film that she'd nostalgically remembered from her childhood, something that stayed the same between Aleph and Bet. It was a small blessing considering their predicament, when so many things had been altered between the worlds, usually for the worse.

Oliver and Krouse had already gone to sleep, and Mars and Luke had gone out for a bite somewhere. Noelle wouldn't leave her room for obvious reasons, and Cody…

Well, Cody had finally been **Cody** one too many times, to say the least.

And so, Jess sat alone in her wheelchair snuggled under some extra blankets, passing time in their little hideout. Well, strictly speaking, she wasn't alone to the outside observer. She'd made a humanoid-enough form with which to...watch tv. Sure, the body she'd crafted had a few extra surprises here and there for anyone who might want to cause problems, but right now she was using the form to watch holiday movies on TV, keeping herself company literally.

Some days she wished they hadn't set up shop in such a metropolitan area; she wanted to create something that could be mistaken for a regular bird and pass the time that way. In a low population area with low light pollution, she could get away with it. In a place like Boston? There was far too great of a chance of being spotted. For now, she'd have to settle for movie time to relax instead.

She just had to put effort into not getting a little more homesick. Regardless of what Krouse said, they weren't getting out of here. The _Simurgh_ of all things dragged them into Bet, which meant she had a plan for them, and Occam's razor dictates that 'letting you all go back home' is probably not in there anywhere.

Or, it _could_ be, actually. If only to let Noelle break down completely and turn into Aleph's very own Endbringer.

Jess let out a sigh before wrenching herself off that particular train of thought. Being melancholy certainly wouldn't help anything. She judged there was at least a half hour left in the movie, at which point she'd have to look for another one if she wanted to be awake to let Mars and Luke back in.

She was halfway through brewing the second pot of coffee when the knock came at the door. Jess walked the body over to the door and looked through the peephole to find Marissa and Luke waiting outside.

 _"Dandelion, Sumac, Lily,"_ Jess said.

 _"Brown recluse, black widow, tarantula,"_ Marissa replied, hopping in place a tad. "Open the door Jess, it's cold."

Jess obliged. "I was midway through a pot of coffee if you guys want any," she said.

"At this hour? Exactly how long did you think we were gonna be out?" Luke asked as he walked towards his room.

"Honestly, about 3:30, maybe 4?"

"Wha? What the hell would we be doing out that late?" Luke responded. Jess just looked at him as best she could in the body she crafted. "Work doesn't count and you know that. Anyway you ladies do whatever, I'm heading to bed."

Marissa returned from the kitchen with coffee in hand, and made a point of sitting down beside Jess's actual body. "You know you should really spend more time using your actual body when you get the chance," she said.

"I know, I know. Shouldn't let my body deteriorate any further," she said. "To be fair, I did need something in case we had unwelcome company."

Marissa jerked her head up a bit. "Did you?"

"No, thankfully. A boring day is a safe day. How's about you? Where'd you go anyway?"

"Huh? Oh, right. Some local paddy trap named O'Houlihan's. Nothing to write home about."

"Ok. You staying up any longer? I'm going to bed now."

"Yeah, I'm just gonna browse a bit, see if there are any gems on PHO."

"Pfffft, good luck with that," Jess said as she walked her body outside to dissolve it. Waking up in her chair she started to move back to her room. "Seriously, after the one job in Pittsburgh that ended up on the news, I learned the hard way that there are a lot more people into tentacles than I once thought."

-ooo-

 **January 6th**

Jess and Marissa waited patiently for their number to be called at the butcher's shop, and Jess prodded Marissa, trying her best to keep Marissa awake. "Seriously," she said under her breath, "Mars what the hell are you doing? This is like the third night this week that you've been up the whole night on the web. And please don't tell me you've gotten sucked into following any conspiracy theories."

"'S not a theory," Marissa grumbled. The lack of sleep showed through the deep puffy circles under her eyes. Jess arched a brow, waiting for her to continue. Marissa sighed, then reached into her coat pocket for a piece of paper.

Jess looked at it, then back to her friend. "This is a receipt. What the fuck is so unnerving about a receipt?" She started to feel a bit of panic as her imagination started to run away from her. _Is this the Simurgh's doing? Is Mars starting to completely lose it?_

"Turn it over."

Jess flipped the receipt over, and read the scribble. She felt her blood run cold as her eyes went wide. She looked back at Marissa trying to hide the shock on her face.

"I have no idea either," Marissa said. "Been looking for Thinkers and Strangers everywhere. None of them sound like the guy."

Marissa paused with a yawn, stretching her arms out.

"I don't think he's one of Accord's either, but I can't be sure..."

"Shit. And you didn't tell Luke did you?" Jess asked. Marissa shook her head. _That's…possibly for the better? Maybe? I think?_ "Alright, when do you want to tell the others about it?"

"I wanna talk to the guy again. He already knows who we are, and he's not doing anything about it" Marissa sighed. "It's a shitty idea though."

Jess scratched her head a bit. "Maybe...what if this guy used to work for Coil?"

"How would that change anything?"

"Well," Jess began, "what if he's got a grudge against Coil and knows some valuable info? I don't think blackmail is on his mind; he would have worded it differently in that case." Jess looked back down again at the piece of paper in her hands. "Accord is meeting with Krouse alone on Saturday night. Krouse said that the next favor might involve hitting the Teeth."

"So what would you say?" Marissa asked. "What should we do about it? I couldn't find anything that fits and I've no idea what kind of powers he could have."

"True. But...it might still be worth it to try and talk to him. The fact that he bothered writing something like that means that he's probably willing to talk on some level." Jess paused. "I'll make a body to talk to him, and that way if things go south I can get you out of there."

Marissa looked back down at the floor, while Jess started thinking up what her next body needs to have.

 _Has to be humanoid, but big enough to carry someone up to twice as big as Mars...probably mostly hollow, dense enough to take a few hits….acid or sonic for the offensive?..._

"Number 37!"

Jess double checked their receipt from the butcher before wheeling up to the counter. She looked back at Marissa, who was just realizing that it was time to leave. As she stood up shakily, Jess shook her head slightly. "Next, we're heading inside the 7/11 down the block, and getting you a small coffee so you don't fall asleep behind the wheel. And then we're heading back to the apartment and you are going to take a long nap."

"Mrgh" was Marissa's eloquent reply.

-ooo-

 _"~...double up or quit, double stake or split, the Ace of Spades, it's the Ace of Spades….~"_

Jess wasn't a super big fan of the 80s, but she could get behind some heavy metaltruth be told. "This the kinda music your mom hated?" she asked Marissa, leaning in to be heard over the music. "Probably told you it was- ...Mars….you okay there?"

Marissa was looking towards the cloistered stage area with what seemed to be mild shock. "What's wrong?" Jess asked.

"That's him. That's the guy who wrote the message," she said. "This might make our job marginally harder."

"Do you think he saw you yet?" Jess asked.

"No, not yet. I'll tell you if he does," Marissa said before fishing out her phone.

"Well at least it's easy to keep an eye on this guy. Might as well enjoy the show."

"What's your plan?" Marissa asked after a minute or so. "The last time I was in on one of those these things-"

"-C'mon Mars," Jess said, cutting her friend off. _Stop feeling bad that Cody decided to be a douche waffle. Or that Accord is a fucking psycho. Like, holy shit._

"Look, relax a bit. Don't psyche yourself out."

Marissa forced herself to calm down. "Do me a favor? Double check that the backups are in place at least?" she asked.

Jess rolled her eyes a bit at that, but it made sense. She got some napkins and wiped her hands before fishing out her phone; even though she looked convincingly like an on-the-larger-side-but-normal girl, she designed her body to produce a very light sheen of sweat. This sweat came in the form of a viscous gel which dampened most incoming blows and served as a solid flame retardant. However, it did make handling a smartphone somewhat more difficult.

In addition to the sweat, she'd also focused on a hollow torso which could open from the clavicle area. If she needed to transport an unconscious person, or if she and Marissa needed to leave in a hurry, the body was tough enough and strong enough for the job. Add to that a long vine-like tongue with a retractable stinger and ample sleep toxin glands, and Jess was feeling about as confident as she was going to while stealth was still important.

She opened the specialized software they'd bought off an unpowered hacker some months ago, updated her current position and made sure the caution mode was set. Unless she personally supplied a kill code at regular intervals, an SOS via text would be sent with her last known location to Krouse, Luke and Oliver.

"We're all set. Happy now?" Jess asked.

"Better," Marissa said. "Think he's got a power?"

"If he's not just the messenger. Thinker probably, or maybe Stranger," Jess supplied.

"Thinker makes more sense. If he was stalking us as a Stranger what does he get from talking to us now? Why bother at all?" Marissa sighed. "Good cape, bad cape?"

"Hey, it's worked for us before."

-ooo-

The next 20 or so minutes passed by a little quicker than Jess would have liked, truth be told, but on the bright side Marissa managed to negotiate a chat with their deliberately obnoxious counterparty with minimal head movement. Jess just had to be careful when making her way through the crowd, no sense risking her disguise any more than she had to.

As the guy who presumably wrote the message led them somewhere more private, Jess did her best to memorize the route they were taking, as well as keep an eye out for the general level of security. Nothing resembling additional security measures jumped out at her along the way, and they were actually in a fire escape stairwell with the door just outside of arm's reach, but Jess knew from experience that it didn't mean much in terms of assuaging her concerns.

"Normally," they guy spoke, while taking off the bass guitar on his shoulder, "this is the point where I'd ask what you're having, and maybe say something about the special."

The man in front of them looked like he couldn't have been much older than them, and Jess noted that he was beginning to sweat ever the slightly from his forehead.

"How do you know who we are?" Marissa asked tersely. "Specifically, how do you know about Noelle? And I'm only asking nicely once."

The man took a breath. "...can we skip that one? I-"

Jess opened her body's mouth and her tongue shot forth, wrapping around the man's neck and choking off the rest of his reply.

"One more time because you weren't paying attention," Jess said in a low voice that seemed to emanate from inside her abdomen. "How. the **fuck**. do you know her name?" Marissa's hands started to twitch, but she did not interject. "And don't bullshit on this or I will snap your neck like a twig," Jess added, pointing the stinger at his throat for emphasis.

He fought against the vine's strangling grip, frantically trying to break it as his air supply was cut off. The man struggled to get two fingers underneath the vine before she relented and loosened her grip.

"Please, please bear with me here. I'm being roundabout _with very good fu-_ "

Jess began to tighten the vine again. "I really don't appreciate bullshit," she responded. "And to emphasize that fact, each time you say something insufficiently plausible I'm going to squeeze tighter. Sound good to you? Great. _How do you know about Noelle?_ "

"Seriously I'm not kidding, I'm trying to not be killed by the guys who made thosevialsyouguysdrankstopchokingme-"

Jess let go slightly, allowing him to inhale properly. "You know who made those. You actually know who made those." Marissa was trying to keep her face as straight as possible. That information was arguably more private than Noelle's existence. She looked towards Jess a moment; the idea of feigning ignorance was tempting, but risky. Jess seemed to agree.

Marissa turned her attention back to their negotiation counterparty. "You didn't answer the question," she said.

"Like I said before, you really wouldn't believe me if I told you, can we pass on that one?" he asked.

"How about 'fuck no'?"

"Fuckin'...Look. Marissa, Jess. You guys are a long, long way from home and we both know what I'm talking about. I'm further from mine."

"What, you're from 3 earths over and we were the earth next door? Is that where you're about to go with this?" Jess scoffed. "How'd you get here? Simurgh drag you here too? More importantly how do you know who we are?"

"No to the first and I'm pretty sure to the second too,-" Jess tightened her grip slightly and the man took the hint. "Alright, alright. It's hard to explain completely, so going piecewise. First part; I am not from Earth Bet, nor do I know how I got here. Do you believe me there?"

"Stop stalling," Marissa said impatiently.

"Re- Fine. Ok, next. I don't have a power, but I've been….think of it like I've gotten a single use of a shitty pre/postcognition power. Basically I've seen bits and pieces of the future- hold up now," -the guy held up a hand to cut off Marissa as she opened her mouth to speak- "I know I sound fucking delusional, but please don't kill me and more importantly, please humor me for the next few minutes. You can and should challenge the premise; just let me lay out the argument. Imagine you're sick at home with a fever, and you're laying down on the couch watching a movie marathon, and you're fading in and out the whole damn time, so you remember jumbled bits and pieces of plot. I remember you guys in particular were there a few times. Usually the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Fine. Who are you? And what do you want from us?"

"Firstly, I'd appreciate it if you stopped fucking choking me." Jess looked over to Marissa who gave a small nod. Jess proceeded to very slowly and deliberately release the man. He rubbed his neck a bit before standing up straight. "Better. Name's Ian by the way."

Marissa impatiently gestured for him to continue.

"Alright first lemme ground myself for a moment here...have you guys _communi_ -, shit wait you totally fucking did, but then why are you still here…what I am forgetting..."

Marissa looked back at Jess as Ian trailed off muttering to himself. Jess coughed to get his attention.

"...ah fuck it. Point is this: please do not work for Coil. Regardless of circumstance, regardless of his promises, just don't fucking work for the guy. It's a shitshow if you do."

Marissa took on a shade or two of confusion to her glare. "What do you mean. A shitshow for who?"

Ian paused for a breath. "Kinda wish I had like a rehearsed thing to say here instead of just ad libbing it but thems the brakes. You guys ever feel that way?" he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

Jess started tapping her foot as a show of impatience. On some level the foot tapping was less to tell this dude to hurry up, and more for the sheer enjoyment of being able to tap her foot. Not that she'd ever admit that to anyone.

"If you guys do go and work for Coil, you're in for a bad fucking time. I'm about to give you an abbreviated series of events assuming you accept, and he finally calls you into Brockton Bay in mid-April-ish, give or take like a week.

"Extremely truncated series of events: you guys get to fight the cape who boxed Leviathan by himself for like an hour, then you get to fight Leviathan in mid-May? Around there. Then you get to have fun with the Slaughterhouse 9, and Crawler specifically tries to get to Noelle, so you get to enjoy that too. After that, Coil manages to get himself killed, and for the kicker, Noelle goes feral. All that takes place in the span of about...two months."

 _Well that's a whole host of reasons to fuck off to preferably the other side of the country, If any of it is actually true_. "You said she goes feral. How bad?"

"Remember Cody?"

"How th- nevermind. That bad?" asked Jess.

"Worse. Noelle just starts mindlessly eating/absorbing people. Triumvirate and friends get called in, plenty of deaths. Also, everyone gets to see and fight evil clones of Eidolon, which is exactly as much fun as it sounds. When all is said and done, Noelle has to be killed, and actually Marissa ends up with the killing b-"

"-You're wrong." Marissa cut in.

Ian held his hands up again. "I know, it's hard to believe and I can't prove it to you but please entertain the thought for two-"

"No. You're wrong. Or the power is wrong or..or something else is fucking wrong. I wouldn't ever kill Noelle."

Jess looked at her friend. She wasn't necessarily buying all the soothsayer nonsense herself but this Ian kid knew too much to be talking completely out of his ass. If only Before he could say anything else she cut him off. "Alright, just stop talking. The main thing you want out of us is to not work for Coil, right?"

Ian nodded, starting to look relieved.

"We'll do it, on one condition."

Marissa did a double take. "Jess, the fuck are you doing?" she hissed as low as possible. It didn't exactly _do_ anything to hide question, but Jess figured Marissa probably didn't give a fuck.

"Chill Mars, you'll like this." She turned back before continuing. "You said Coil was lying about being able to help Noelle?"

Again, Ian nodded, though more resigned this time.

"You don't want us to work for Coil? You figure out how to help her, and you figure out how to get us home" she said, poking him in the chest with her tongue-vine for good measure.

"...god fucking dammit. That...doesn't have a high chance of-"

"Tough shit. That's the price."

Ian dropped his head. _"Any chance you could make that 'and' into an 'or' for fuck's sake?"_

"Repeat that?" Marissa asked curtly.

"I said I'll think about it," Ian replied. "Not exactly doing amazing on resources right now; no money nor means of communication, food and shelter are very much being rented right now. Actually strike that, calling it rented gives me too much credit. 'Charity and more than a little creepy all things considered' is a better descriptor."

"Then where the hell did you get the instruments?" Jess asked.

"The guitarist noticed some prick trying to roofie his date, and switched the drinks. Date bounced, and the owner called a cab for the would-be date rapist but not before my friend relieved him of a credit card, and used it to buy this shit the next day before he knew it went missing and could cancel it."

Jess laughed. "You expect me to believe that?"

"Honestly I don't believe it either but that was his story and he's sticking to it come hell or high water," Ian said with a shrug. "So recap. You agree to at the very least not work for Coil if and only if I can find out how to help Noelle and possible ways for you to go home? That about the size of it?"

"Sounds about right."

"...I'll see what I can do. It's not like you don't know where to find me if you change your mind."

Marissa reached out to open the door and step outside, but stopped herself. "One last question. Why? What do you get out of this?"

"A reduced chance of the Nine or the Fallen coming through Boston and hooooly shit I completely forgot about the Fallen's existence." Ian turned and headed back into the interior of the building, muttering to himself.

Jess turned and looked at Marissa, hands raised in the universally understood 'fuckit' gesture.

-ooo-

Marissa and Jess didn't talk much at all on the way back, each digesting what exactly had transpired.

 _I can't dismiss it all. He was right about too many things to be completely full of shit. I mean really? Leviathan, S9, and evil Eidolon clones back to back to back? That sounds excessive even for this world. Jess chuckled lightly to herself._

Her projected body quivered in trepidation.

 _But it's totally possible._

"What's funny?" Marissa asked.

"The discount oracle who reeked of whiskey."

"Oh." Marissa let the silence drag on for a few more moments. "Do you buy any of it? I mean it sounds real dumb, but…"

"...the Simurgh is a thing so maybe it isn't that dumb?" Jess offered.

"...yeah."

The two lapsed back into silence the rest of the way, and turned in for the night, as Jess dissolved her construct.

As she started to drift to sleep, a small smile made it's way onto her face. If he's telling the truth though, maybe he can actually find something useful. Long shot but not really any worse than our current chances.

Maybe….maybe we will find a way home after all. 

* * *

A/N (WantonConstruction) : Again, apologies, RL duties were not being kind to Verlo and I over the past few months. (Actually got worse during March for me, but the brunt of the shit pile has been dealt with.) That said, a Taylor chapter is next. Since RL has not let up yet on Verlo, I'll see what I can do.

Again, for those who actually read these, sorry for the delay.


	12. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

* * *

 **Taylor Hebert**

 _April 14th_

"Don't take this the wrong way, Weaver, but….where are we going?"

I suppressed a grimace. Her question bothered me for the simple reason that I actually didn't have the slightest idea. Lisa was right (again); Crown was rubbing off on me, and not in the best of ways.

"We're creating some distance first," I replied, hoping to mollify her.

She groused at that. "The numbers said you wouldn't hurt me, and I don't want to give myself a headache to figure out that you actually have no idea what you're doing."

Dinah, you little twerp. I didn't stop myself from letting out a sigh that time.

Dinah and I were sitting in towards the back of the bus as it pulled away from the stop. Her question bothered me because, well, I didn't have an answer that wasn't 'away from where we were.' As things stood I was still half expecting Chimera or Impulse to ram the bus in the next few minutes. They were both really good at their jobs, and the fact I hadn't sensed either yet was starting to seriously worry me.

Almost as much as the fact that I really didn't have any plan. This morning I was in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm. Then the channel on the TV changed and I was treated to the sight of the Undersiders robbing Brockton Bay Central. Within a few moments I was scribbling a note to Dad about why I'm no longer in the room, and in all the excitement, I'm not even sure I can recall what exactly I wrote other than something along the lines of "sorry for running off.".

Up until now I actually hadn't put any thought at all into where I was going to bring Dinah to complete this impromptu rescue mission, and going over the possibilities in my mind wasn't helping.

I couldn't bring her back to the hospital, that was just a terrible idea all around.

I couldn't bring her back to the Undersiders' place, that was an even shittier idea.

Nor could I bring her to the PRT or the BBPD. In the wake of the Slaughterhouse Nine, Lisa got to see just how deep Coil's roster of spies ran. If I had the trust of Armsmaster, or Miss Militia, or even Assault, then maybe it could be done without tipping off Coil, but that's just not an option for me right now.

Could I bring her back home, perhaps? Ehhhhhh. Maybe? Depends on to what extent I can get Dad to believe and listen to me, and I couldn't see that happening. Even then, it also probably wasn't the safest bet. Maybe I could ask Kurt and Lacey for help?

Nah, why did I even consider that an option?

I thought a little more about my other options. Above anyone else, the Guardian of Brockton Bay would have been the greatest possible help to Dinah. His powers were highly situational and his highest classification was a Shaker 4, but he was a virtually unparalleled strategic planner and tactician, and arguably the most successful solo cape in history. He also had an incredible code of honor and morality to go along with his sharp mind.

Although Lily had gotten most of the credit in the end, the survivors of the battle all knew it was his foresight and incredible battle plan that led to the defeat of the first Endbringer. If anyone would know what to do in this situation it would be him. It also helped that the cunning bastard had babysat me and Emma for years and was the closest thing I had to an older brother.

Unfortunately, he really didn't like to be found after his trigger, and like Mannequin, he always seemed to find a way to get behind me even through my swarm sense. There was no way I could turn to him for help without explicitly attracting attention, and I couldn't afford to be too conspicuous now.

I also couldn't bring Dinah to the Dallons' place either. The Pelhams would have been an excellent option if I could somehow shove the next 4 or 5 months' worth of shared experiences into Amy's head, but as it was, she would probably just ask me what the fuck I'm doing at her house. Remembering the first few days - no, weeks of talking with her after she jumped off that roof...yeah, that wasn't going to happen easily. Next.

Maybe I could try contacting the Pelhams instead? I would have to convince them to not just immediately drop Dinah off to the authorities, which in turn would bring Coil's spy network immediately into play. I also really didn't have proof of said spy roster.

Shit. I was really running out of options here. Who else did I really even know at this point? Emma?

…...yeah, no. Fuck that.

"Dinah? Do you know anyone who-"

"I asked already. They get to me anyway with a 94.337% chance or better each time. Somehow leaving the state to hide with grandma makes it even worse."

I couldn't help but tilt my head at that. If it were true -and this is Dinah I'm talking to so it is- then that means Coil's reach was a lot farther than even Lisa was able to figure out. That wasn't a pleasant thought in the slightest.

Dinah's stomach chose exactly that time to growl, and I belatedly realized that I also hadn't eaten anything in the past few hours, and neither had she. If nothing else, I could really use that time to try and think of a few more alternatives. Once I got the problem of Dinah's safety taken care, I could get back to trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, how this happened to me, and what my options were from here.

Joy.

-000-

We'd gotten off the bus at the second to last stop and immediately got on the next one going the opposite direction, just to add a little more confusion to anyone who might still be following us. I hadn't sensed anything or anyone problematic in the last half hour or so, but I wasn't about to let my guard down. My time with the Undersiders working for, and later against him, had taught me that Coil was patient if nothing else.

We ended up getting off a few blocks north of the end of the Boardwalk. At least Dinah didn't need to be convinced that avoiding the Boardwalk entirely was a good idea. Instead, she dragged me towards a hole-in-the-wall americanized chinese joint. My hands balled tightly as we got closer; I was reasonably certain we weren't in ABB territory yet, but I stepped up my surveillance efforts regardless. It also wasn't helping my opinion of the place that there was a veritable cockroach and house centipede infestation in the kitchen, but at least I could do something about that problem.

Spiders have to eat too after all.

Dinah stopped walking suddenly and turned to face me with a concerned look on her face. "Um. Weaver. Are you gonna eat too? Isn't that hard to do with a mask on even if it's just a scarf thing?"

"Uhhh….I can wait until after you're safe, Dinah?" I posited.

"You're really bad at lying," she said. "And besides, you're still trying to rescue me. As long as you pay for the food I can keep a secret. Pinky promise," she finished, holding out a finger.

I just looked at her for about a solid 15 seconds while she kept a visage of perfect innocence firmly in place. "Fine," I said with a huff, pulling her along and past the restaurant, before rounding the corner again onto a side street. Checking over the bugs I had left on various passerbys, and pissing off one guy in an inconvenient spot for a few moments, I figured I'd just bought us about 30 seconds of privacy.

I took off the mask and hoodie, and held them at my side, before offering my hand. "I'm Taylor. Nice to meet you."

Seeing my face, she flashed me a smile as we turned around and headed back.

It was a nice smile. I'd never seen Dinah Alcott smile before and it actually threw me off a bit.

A while later, the waitress arrived with a refill of tea for me, and a milkshake for Dinah, along with the check. Even after deliberately picking the cheapest possible items to eat on my end, the combined forces of Dinah's appetite and mine were doing their best to wipe out what little money I had left.

I kept scanning the area for anyone who could begin to pose a problem, sneaking a bug or two into various pockets and feeling around for weapons or phones or similar things. There were a few false positives, and for a chance of pace, no actual issues.

"So….any ideas on good hiding spots yet?" she asked as we were getting ready to leave.

Except for that one. Right. "Still working on it," I said after a sigh. "I have a backup that might work, but I'm still working on a better plan A."

"Well, what's plan B? Run to California and ask Alexandria for help?" she asked with just a hint of sarcasm.

"That would be plan E," I joked back. "Plan D is going to Eidolon in Dallas, and Plan C is going to Legend in New York. Plan B is turning to my dad."

Dinah's face fell. "You have problems with yours too?" she asked quietly.

"I guess you could say that," I admitted after a moment. I felt a sickening cocktail of emotions bubbling up. Guilt and sadness principally, because I didn't talk to my dad at all and just left him a half-assed note. I have more than a few rationalizations for why I didn't, but at the core of it was the fact that I didn't want to. I hadn't wanted to for years after Mom died, and Dad hadn't wanted to do much of anything either. The closest thing I had to a male role model had run off looking for Crane the Harmonious mere days after Emma friend-dumped me.

A surge of anger also brimmed underneath my hurricane of emotions. Dinah has a power, and a ridiculously strong one at that. If her father was the one who caused her trigger event…

I forced it down, and made sure that the 'shunting emotions' thing that Lisa and Brian told me I do from time to time was happening only to the bugs that were currently underground or in the walls. Later. I'd deal with all that later.

"Well," Dinah started up again, "I suppose I'm not the only one having a bad day." She pointed at the grainy quality screen in the corner, where the news was going over the robbery.

"-and we've now received confirmation that despite the structural damage that ensued in the clash, only 5 civilians were injured, and all are expected to make a full recovery. We now go to the ground with Maggie Cantor. Maggie?" The screen flipped to a young woman who couldn't have been older than 26 standing outside the bank. Large sections of the street and sidewalk behind the bank that had been ripped apart were visible in the background.

"Thank you Kristen. The PRT has yet to issue a formal statement, but as you can see behind me there was a bit of a scuffle between the Undersiders and the Wards as the former made their escape. In particular, most of the rubble you see was caused by Hellhound's dogs-"

I blinked for a moment at the mention of Rachel. The last time this robbery happened (and isn't that a weird thought that I'm not going to get used to) I was involved, and I argued in favor of trying to fight head on as a break from the hit-and-run strategy. Looks they stuck to their guns this time.

The talking heads didn't say anything else of note after that, but they did loop some footage of the conflict, and I noticed something else. Crown wasn't there.

The first time around Crown, being who he was, had stumbled onto the scene after he heard that a bank robbery was happening. He'd fought alongside the Wards, and used his lightning manipulation to knock out Rachel and break Regent's taser before Grue was able to subdue him. Regent wouldn't shut up about it for like a week afterwards. Crown was part of the half of the team that Coil couldn't get to help kidnap Dinah. The only difference is that while the other guys stayed home, he went out, drank a little too much, and picked a fight with the first group of people he thought were acceptable targets: Us.

I turned to Dinah again. "I might just have thought of a plan A."

-000-

Artificer lived towards the western outskirts of the city, so I wasn't fantastically concerned about gang activity. Slightly worse than downtown, but not nearly as bad as near the docks. That didn't mean I didn't have other things to worry about though. Chimera tended to wander around and patrol as a relatively small, black, canine hybrid when he felt antsy, so I needed to keep an eye out for anything that looked off.

A not insignificant part of me did not like this plan. Artificer - Petyr out of costume - had a very soft spot in particular for kids, and the plan called for taking full advantage of that fact. It was horribly manipulative, but it was the best thing I could come up with on short notice. I hope he'll forgive me later.

We walked up to the house that I was fairly certain was his, but just to make doubly sure, I felt out the existing insects in the walls, and reinforced their numbers with a bit of the swarm I'd been dragging with me. Individually, bug senses kind of sucked, but by clustering enough of them and straining my power's feedback a bit, I could sort of listen in through them.

The quality still wasn't great, but I definitely heard somebody in there. I had my impromptu receiver cluster move around to where the sound was loudest, which happened to be in the kitchen. It took me a little bit to get a really good spot, but I heard someone singing, probably along to a radio.

"~...pay attention to the cracked streets and the broken homes, some call it slums some call it niiiiiice, I wanna take you through a wasteland I like to call my home; Welcome to Paradise…~"

That sounded like Crown actually - Gabriel when not setting things on fire - so this was almost certainly the right house. I would have asked Dinah to confirm it but I didn't want her using her power unless it was absolutely necessary. I went and rang the doorbell. After a few moments it opened.

"Hello, can I...help you two?" asked an older black woman who was certainly not who I expected to see. I kept the shock off my face.

"Hi. Sorry, in case I have the wrong house, but does a Petyr Stanovic live here? Or around here?"

"No, sorry," she said looking a bit nervous. "I don't know anyone by that name. I….I'm sorry miss but I have to ask why you're wearing that...scarf around your face?"

"I'm a cape. Independent hero as of this morning, and I haven't picked out my name yet."

"Oh. Um. Is this person in trouble of any kind?"

He's not, technically, if you didn't consider his employment under Coil trouble, but right now I sure am because I was practically certain that this is where he lived, and I can't exactly access a computer right now to double check. "Yes and no, but the details aren't important. What about a Gabriel Olrikssen? Does he live around here?"

"I can't say I know anyone by that name," she responded.

Fuck. What about Cloak and Dagger? "Mortimer Denton? Rena Andrews?" I asked.

Another shake of the head. Damn, there goes plan A. And it's not like I could even ask Dinah for any help if I wanted to, because she needs to see what they look like. I let out a short sigh before turning to the woman again. "Thank you anyway for your time. We'll be going now." I turned around to start walking away, but caught myself. "One last thing; if the police or the PRT come looking? You never talked to us. They have a huge problem with moles right now" I wasn't out of the woods just yet, so it couldn't hurt to try and say something just in case it made Coil's goons' jobs just that little bit harder.

When we got to the end of the block and started turning the corner, when Dinah turned to me.

"Guess it's time for plan B?"

-000-

I really didn't want to talk to my dad right now. How the fuck was I going to explain to him what I've been up to lately? Ignoring how...strained...the nature of our relationship was the first time around, well….uh...this point in time? God, time travel fucking sucks for grammar. Mom probably rolled in her grave every time something like that was put on a page.

The point I was getting to, is that I knew I'd seriously pissed off Coil by keeping his hands off of Dinah. Unless my dad decides to be extremely irresponsible as a parent, he probably went to the police to figure out why his daughter bolted from a hospital bed, and Coil could probably get to him in a single phone call. And isn't that an even more fucked up thought? That my dad being the shitty father he usually was after Mom died would actually kind of help me in the very short term?

Regardless, I was down a group of potential cape allies for now, and I was running out of time before my dad was seriously in trouble. We reached the next bus stop, and Dinah promptly made a show of laying down across the seats.

"Wake me up when the bus gets here..." she mumbled.

I was about to come up with a response when I felt something approaching through the air from the southeast of my range.

It was too large to be a bird, which meant Chimera had probably just caught up to us, which sucked even more thanks to the fact that he was probably the least amenable to talking instead of fighting.

"Weaver? What's the problem?" Dinah asked me, concern evident in her voice as she sat back upright.

My swarm had been pretty quiet when I had them passively following me around, but now I was getting ready for a fight, and I wasn't being any more subtle about it than absolutely necessary. "Relax, but, be ready to run when I tell you to," I instructed. "Don't turn around, but we may have some-"

"2.8722% chance that anyone tries to hurt us in the next hour," Dinah said with her eyes closed, holding her temple.

Right. That's also an option. "Doesn't that hurt when you do that?" I asked her.

"Not a whole lot," she replied. "It's only when I need to ask a bunch in a row that the first few only hurt a little bit but then each one starts hurting really bad after that. But as long as I put like an hour or two in between them I feel mostly ok."

Well that was good to know. I relaxed before turning around to see who or what exactly was flying towards us. I was suddenly blinded by a flash of light, followed by a sinking and overwhelming feeling of dread, terror, and awe.

…

Why is Glory Girl here?


	13. Interlude: Danny Hebert

**Danny**

 **April 14th, 2:33 PM**

There's a lot of shit you tend to put up with if you're stuck living in Brockton Bay. The Empire. The Azn Bad Boys. The Merchants. And before them, the Teeth. The Marche. There's a saying somewhere that went something like "the strong take what they can and the weak suffer what they must." Annette would've known who said it, but damn if the Bay wasn't a shining example of that idea.

The presence of the Protectorate and New Wave mean that the Villains couldn't get away with _everything_ and that the citizens aren't _totally_ defenseless, but it's a losing battle. Anyone with a pair of eyes could see that.

That's the other major part of living in Brockton Bay. Or my life at least. Just about everything felt like a series of losing battles.

The Dockworker's Union is my go-to example. 3% a year. That was the rate at which our budget has been **shrinking** over the past four years, and before that, we were stagnant for a decade. That kind of economic slump is understandably brutal on people, and of course, they start to get desperate.

I currently have 8 in 10 guys working under me with a prior criminal offense. Some of them, about 6 in 10, had more than one. They'll have a nightmare of a time trying to get a job anywhere else, and _hell,_ I wasn't even supposed to have a few of these guys on my roster!

Each year we get told that it's still too expensive to clear out the boat graveyard. And each year the estimate climbs another 50 grand or so. Shipping as an industry has been gutted all over the globe, and the fact is, it's not coming back anytime soon whether we like it or not. You could feel the mood like a wet blanket over everyone working at the Docks. Everyone felt like they're waiting to die a slow death.

I'd felt something similar ever since Annette died. Every day it felt like you were just going through the motions, and it keeps getting harder and harder to care. These days I didn't even know if Taylor really even saw me as her father anymore, or if I were more like a housemate that happened to be named 'Dad.'

This was the second time that Taylor had wound up in the hospital this year. It was somehow even more bizarre this time around. Taylor had apparently been skipping school, and just flat out collapsed in the middle of the day. Some good samaritans dropped her off at the hospital, and when I got the call, I'd probably committed a half dozen traffic violations trying to get to Brockton General.

I witnessed Panacea herself fight against some horrific unseen force that kept fucking tearing my daughter's limbs and bones apart. I'm probably going to have nightmares about that sight for the next few years at the very least.

And what happens when my daughter is _finally_ completely healed? She jumps out a window like she's fucking escaping from prison, leaving a two sentence note for me that didn't explain **anything**.

My first instinct was to go to the cops. That's what a responsible parent would do at least when their child goes missing.

Instead, I went to the cluster of law offices that Alan worked at, but not to see him necessarily. No, he worked with Carol Dallon, aka Brandish. Panacea's mother.

It was an extremely long shot. But hope was all a father had at this point.

-000-

Mrs. Dallon's office was honestly more or less what I expected out of a divorce lawyer. The furniture had burnished oak accents here and there, and the seats were leather, yet slightly uncomfortable. The combination leaned both a warmth and a weight to the office, making it feel safe-ish for lack of a better word, but definitely not a place you wanted to be.

"Mr. Hebert, please have a seat, and make yourself comfortable," she started. "Take as much time as you need to collect your thoughts."

I took a few deep breaths to try and calm down. It wasn't working.

"I need help with my daughter," I managed after another half a minute of stalling.

Carol nodded slowly. "Custody battles do have an annoying habit of being especially trying on everyone involved. Why don't you start from the beginning?"

I took another breath. It was now or never.

"Mrs. Dallon, my wife died three years ago. I...I didn't come to you for legal counsel of any kind. My daughter landed in the hospital a few days ago, and her body was tearing itself apart despite your daughter's best efforts, and when that finally stops, she runs away from a hospital…. what? Hours later?" I couldn't stop my voice from climbing in volume a bit at the end there, and I took another breath before continuing. "I couldn't think of anything else to do."

Her expression remained very neutral, though I thought I saw a bit of a reaction when I mentioned the hospital. "I highly doubt that you couldn't think of going to the police. You probably don't trust them to do their jobs properly, which is a different concern," she replied with a small sigh. "Not that I can really begrudge that sentiment, especially after working in law as long as I have, but you do have to understand Mr. Hebert that you are asking a bit much. I can't promise to deliver on it, and I do have other appointments soon."

I gripped the sides of the chair as hard as I could in an effort to not scream at her. What I was asking of her was admittedly more than a bit of an imposition, with the taking advantage of an unmasked hero's identity and all. Also, screaming at a person who could effortlessly separate the left side of my body from the right was hardly one of the better ideas I've ever had.

"I understand," were the words that I managed to say calmly. "Please, just…," I started before trailing off. I wanted to ask her to consider it.

Sure. Whatever. Just consider looking for a single runaway teenager, in addition to the myriad sex trafficking rings, drug peddlers, dogfighting rings, murderers, and superpowered murderers running around. The same runaway teenager I should have been paying attention to over the past two years, instead of simply retreating into myself and barely acknowledging.

Mrs. Dallon sighed slightly. "Do you have a picture of her?" she asked.

I snapped my head up to look at her as I fumbled with my wallet before handing it over. "Once again, I cannot in good faith promise anything, but I could have my daughter try and keep an eye out. If you could write down a number I could reach you at?"

The last time I was this happy to give my number to someone had to be when I first started dating Annette.

-000-

I still went and filed the complaint at the nearest precinct afterward, where I was met with the level of apathy I more or less expected. Afterward, I figured I might as well go home and kill a bit of time. I had no idea whatsoever where Taylor might have gone (and wasn't that a testament to my failures of late.)

If I did, I would have started just driving around the likely spots, hoping to run into her. However, neither Taylor nor I owned cell phones, so the best chance of contact from anyone, especially Taylor, required me to be physically in the house listening for a phone call or a door knock.

I killed some time flipping through channels, not really paying attention to much. Oh look, some dickheads managed to rob the central bank earlier today, so that was all over the news. Fun.

I tuned in and out of some other stuff; a documentary on the Wright brothers, a live show of Canary in Atlanta, introducing some up and coming new band. A cooking show, a Celtics vs Knicks game. All the same bullshit I came back to every day really. I actually tried to pay attention to a few of the shows, but my focus remained on the phone and the door.

At around 6:30 is when there was a knock on the door. I nearly jumped off the couch when I heard the sound. Unfortunately, it probably wasn't Taylor, as she would have simply let herself in, provided she took the house keys with her when she pulled a Rapunzel with the hospital bedding. I went up to the door to find two police officers standing outside.

"Mr. Hebert?" the first asked. He was a bit shorter than me, with a bit of a vague Filipino look about him, but he looked like he probably weighed twice as much as I did with most of it being raw muscle. His partner probably had an inch or two on me, and even though he wasn't as obviously powerful as the other guy, he was definitely not somebody I wanted to meet in a dark alley. "I'm Officer Nagata, and this is my partner, Officer Vargas. You filed a missing persons' report earlier today, correct?"

"I did. My daughter, have you found her?"

"Well, we may have, but if you'd like to come down to the station to verify a couple of things with us, that would be great," Vargas replied.

Something about the way he and his partner smiled made me feel...off about the situation. "Wait, why can't you just bring her here? Did she-"

Nagata punched me in the stomach hard enough to make me vomit, and I crumpled to the ground. My eyes watered as I tried to draw breath through the pain, and I looked up in time just to catch Vargas jamming a syringe into my neck.

All the detail in my vision quickly faded into a blotchy mosaic as I lost all sense of feeling in my body.

My head began to pleasantly float into the clouds, and all sense of what was happening left me.


End file.
